



























































































































































COLLECTED ESSAYS 

By X. H. HUXLEY 


VOLUME V 








SCIENCE AND 

CHRISTIAN TRADITION 

ESSAYS 

BY p^T 

THOMAS H. HUXLEY 


NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 




■ W^S 


Authorized Edition. 


486555 
N. 4 S ‘35 




# 


PREFACE 


“For close upon forty years I have been writing with one 
purpose ; from time to time, I have fought for that which seemed 
to me the truth, perhaps still more, against that which I have 
thought error; and, in this way, I have reached, indeed over¬ 
stepped, the threshold of old age. There, every earnest man 
has to listen to the voice within: * Give an account of thy 
stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward.’ 

“ That I have been an unjust steward my conscience does not 
bear witness. At times blundering, at times negligent, Heaven 
knows: but, on the whole, I have done that which I felt able 
and called upon to do ; and I have done it without looking to 
the right or to the left; seeking no man’s favour, fearing no 
man’s disfavour. 

“ But what is it that I have been doing ? In the end one’s 
conceptions should form a whole, though only parts may 
have found utterance, as occasion arose ; now do these exhibit 
harmony and mutual connexion ? In one’s zeal much of the old 
gets broken to pieces ; but has one made ready something new, 
fit to be set in the place of the old ? 

“That they merely destroy without reconstructing, is the 
especial charge, with which those who work in this direction 
are constantly reproached. In a certain sense I do not defend 
myself against the charge; but I deny that any reproach is 
deserved. 

“I have never proposed to myself to begin outward construc¬ 
tion ; because I do not believe that the time has come for it. 
Our present business is with inward preparation, especially the 


VI 


PREFACE 


preparation of those who have ceased to be content with the 
old, and find no satisfaction in half measures. I have wished, 
and I still wish, to disturb no man’s peace of mind, no man’s 
beliefs; but only to point out to those in whom they are 
already shattered, the direction in which, in my conviction, 
firmer ground lies. ” 1 

So wrote one of the protagonists of the New 
Reformation—and a well-abused man if ever 
there was one—a score of years since, in the re¬ 
markable book in which he discusses the negative 
and the positive results of the rigorous application 
of scientific method to the investigation of the 
higher problems of human life. 

Recent experience leads me to imagine that 
there may be a good many countrymen of my 
own, even at this time, to whom it may be profit¬ 
able to read, mark and inwardly digest, the 
weighty words of the author of that “ Leben Jesu,” 
which, half a century ago, stirred the religious 
world so seriously that it has never settled down 
again quite on the old foundations; indeed, some 
think it never will. I have a personal interest in 
the carrying out of the recommendation I venture 
to make. It may enable many worthy persons, in 
whose estimation I should really be glad to stand 
higher than I do, to become aware of the possibility 
that my motives in writing the essays, contained 
in this and the preceding volume, were not exactly 
those that they ascribe to me. 

1 D. F. Strauss, Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872), pp. 9 10. 


PREFACE 


vii 


I too have reached the term at which the still, 
small voice, more audible than any other to the 
dulled ear of age, makes its demand; and I have 
found that itds of no sort ol use to try to cook the 
accounts rendered. Nevertheless, I distinctly de¬ 
cline to admit some of the items charged ; more 
particularly that of having “ gone out of my way ” 
to attack the Bible; and I as steadfastly deny 
that “ hatred of Christianity ” is a feeling with 
which I have any acquaintance. There are very 
few things which I find it permissible to hate; and 
though, it may be, that some of the organisations, 
which arrogate to themselves the Christian name, 
have richly earned a place in the category of 
hateful things, that ought to have nothing to do 
with one’s estimation of the religion, which they 
have perverted and disfigured out of all likeness 
to the original. 

The simple fact is that, as I have already more 
than once hinted, my story is that of the wolf and 
the lamb over again. I have never “ gone out of 
my way ” to attack the Bible, or anything else : 
it was the dominant ecclesiasticism of my early 
days, which, as I believe, without any warrant 
from the Bible itself, thrust the book in my way. 

I had set out on a journey, with no other 
purpose than that of exploring a certain province 
of natural knowledge; I strayed no hair’s breadth 
from the course which it was my right and my 
duty to pursue ; and yet I found that, whatever 


PREFACE 


viii 

route I took, before long, I came to a tall and 
formidable-looking fence. Confident as I might 
be in the existence of an ancient and indefeasible 
right of way, before me stood .the thorny 
barrier with its comminatory notice-board—“ No 
Thoroughfare. By order. Moses.” There seemed 
no way over; nor did the prospect of creeping 
round, as I saw some do, attract me. True there 
was no longer any cause to fear the spring guns 
and man-traps set by former lords of the manor; 
but one is apt to get very dirty going on all-fours. 
The only alternatives were either to give up my 
journey—which I was not minded to do—or to 
break the fence down and go through it. 

Now I was and am, by nature, a law-abiding 
person, ready and willing to submit to all legiti¬ 
mate authority. But I also had and have a 
rooted conviction, that reasonable assurance of 
the legitimacy should precede the submission ; so 
I made it my business to look up the manorial 
title-deeds. The pretensions of the ecclesiastical 
“ Moses ” to exercise a control over the operations 
of the reasoning faculty in the search after truth, 
thirty centuries after his age, might be justifiable; 
but, assuredly, the credentials produced in justifi¬ 
cation of claims so large required careful scrutiny. 

Singular discoveries rewarded my industry. 
The ecclesiastical “ Moses ” proved to be a mere 
traditional mask, behind which, no doubt, lay the 
features of the historical Moses—just as many a 


PREFACE 


IX 


mediaeval fresco has been hidden by the whitewash 
of Georgian churchwardens. And as the aesthetic 
rector too often scrapes away the defacement, only 
to find blurred, parti-coloured patches, in which the 
original design is no longer to be traced ; so, when 
the successive layers of Jewish and Christian tra¬ 
ditional pigment, laid on, at intervals, for near 
three thousand years, had been removed, by even 
the tenderest critical operations, there was not 
much to be discerned of the leader of the Exodus. 

Only one point became perfectly clear to me, 
namely, that Moses is not responsible for nine- 
tenths of the Pentateuch ; certainly not for the 
legends which had been made the bugbears of 
science. In fact, the fence turned out to be a mere 
heap of dry sticks and brushwood, and one might 
walk through it with impunity: the which I did. 
But I was still young, when I thus ventured to 
assert my liberty; and young people are apt to be 
filled with a kind of sceva indignatio , when they 
discover the wide discrepancies between things as 
they seem and things as they are. It hurts their 
vanity to feel that they have prepared themselves 
for a mighty struggle to climb over, or break their 
way through, a rampart, which turns out, on close 
approach, to be a mere heap of ruins; venerable, 
indeed, and archseologically interesting, but of no 
other moment. And some fragment of the super¬ 
fluous energy accumulated is apt to find vent in 
strong language. 


X 


PREFACE 


Such, I suppose, was my case, when I wrote 
some passages which occur in an essay reprinted 
among “ Darwiniana ” 1 But when, not long ago 
“ the voice ” put it to me, whether I had better 
not expunge, or modify, these passages ; whether 
really, they were not a little too strong; I had to 
reply, with all deference, that while, from a merely 
literary point of view, I might admit them to be 
rather crude, I must stand by the substance of these 
items of my expenditure. I further ventured to 
express the conviction that scientific criticism of 
the Old Testament, since 1860, has justified every 
word of the estimate of the authority of the 
ecclesiastical “Moses” written at that time. And, 
carried away by the heat of self-justification, I even 
ventured to add, that the desperate attempt now set 
afoot to force biblical and post-biblical mythology 
into elementary instruction, renders it useful and 
necessary to go on making a considerable outlay in 
the same direction. Not yet, has “ the cosmogony 
of the semi-barbarous Hebrew” ceased to be the 
“ incubus of the philosopher, and the opprobrium 
of the orthodox ; ” not yet, has “ the zeal of the 
Bibliolater ” ceased from troubling; not yet, are 
the weaker sort, even of the instructed, at rest 
from their fruitless toil “ to harmonise impossi¬ 
bilities,” and “ to force the generous new wine of 
science into the old bottles of Judaism.” 

But I am aware that the head and front of my 
1 Collected Essays , vol. ii., “On the Origin of Species” (1860). 


PREFACE 


XI 


offending lies not now where it formerly lay. Thirty 
years ago, criticism of “ Moses ” was held by most 
respectable people to be deadly sin; now it has 
sunk to the rank of a mere peccadillo ; at least, if 
it stops short of the history of Abraham. Destroy 
the foundation of most forms of dogmatic Christi¬ 
anity contained in the second chapter of Genesis, if 
you will; the new ecclesiasticism undertakes to 
underpin the superstructure and make it,atany rate 
to the eye, as firm as ever: but let him be anathema 
who applies exactly the same canons of criticism 
to the opening chapters of “ Matthew ” or of 
“ Luke/* School-children may be told that the 
world was by no means made in six days, and that 
implicit belief in the story of Noah’s Ark is per¬ 
missible only, as a matter of business, to their 
toy-makers; but they are to hold for the certainest 
of truths, to be doubted only at peril of their 
salvation, that their Galilean fellow-child Jesus, 
nineteen centuries ago, had no human father. 

Well, we will pass the item of 1860, said “the 
voice.” But why all this more recent coil about 
the Gadarene swine and the like ? Do you pre¬ 
tend that these poor animals got in your way, 
years and years after the “ Mosaic ” fences we^e 
down, at any rate so far as you are concerned ? 

Got in my way? Why, my good “voice,” they 
were driven in my way. I had happened to 
make a statement, than which, so far as I have 


PREFACE 


xii 

ever been able to see, nothing can be more 
modest or inoffensive; to wit, that I am con¬ 
vinced of my own utter ignorance about a great 
number of things, respecting which the great 
majority of my neighbours (not only those of 
adult years, but children repeating their cate¬ 
chisms) affirm themselves to possess full infor¬ 
mation. I ask any candid and impartial judge, 
Is that attacking anybody or anything ? 

Yet, if I had made the most wanton and arro¬ 
gant onslaught on the honest convictions of other 
people, I could not have been more hardly dealt 
with. The pentecostal charism, I believe, ex¬ 
hausted itself amongst the earliest disciples. Yet 
any one who has had to attend, as I have done, to 
copious objurgations, strewn with such appella¬ 
tions as “ inhdel ” and “ coward,” must be a 
hardened sceptic indeed if he doubts the exist¬ 
ence of a “gift of tongues” in the Churches 
of our time; unless, indeed, it should occur to 
him that some of these outpourings may have 
taken place after “the third hour of the day.” 
I am far from thinking that it is worth while 
to give much attention to these inevitable inci¬ 
dents of all controversies, in which one party has 
acquired the mental peculiarities which are gene¬ 
rated by the habit of much talking, with immunity 
from criticism. But as a rule, they are the sauce of 
dishes of misrepresentations and inaccuracies which 
it may be a duty, nay, even an innocent pleasure, 


PREFACE 


xiii 

to expose. In the particular case of which I am 
thinking, I felt, as Strauss says, “able and called 
upon ” to undertake the business: and it is no 
responsibility of mine, if I found the Gospels, 
with their miraculous stories, of which the Gada- 
rene is a typical example, blocking my way, as 
heretofore, the Pentateuch had done. 

I was challenged to question the authority for 
the theory of “ the spiritual world,” and the prac¬ 
tical consequences deducible from human relations 
to it, contained in these documents. 

In my judgment, the actuality of this spiritual 
world—the value of the evidence for its objective 
existence and its influence upon the course of 
things—are matters, which lie as much within 
the province of science, as any other question 
about the existence and powers of the varied 
forms of living and conscious activity. 

It really is my strong conviction that a man 
has no more right to say he believes this world 
is haunted by swarms of evil spirits, without being 
able to produce satisfactory evidence of the fact, 
than he has a right to say, without adducing ade¬ 
quate proof, that the circumpolar antarctic ice 
swarms with sea-serpents. I should not like to 
assert positively that it does not. I imagine 
that no cautious biologist would say as much ; but 
while quite open to conviction, he might properly 
decline to waste time upon the consideration 
of talk, no better accredited than forecastle 


XIV 


PREFACE 


“ yarns,” about such monsters of the deep. 
And if the interests of ordinary veracity dictate 
this course, in relation to a matter of so little 
consequence as this, what must be our obligations 
in respect of the treatment of a question which is 
fundamental alike for science and for ethics ? For 
not only does our general theory of the universe 
and of the nature of the order which pervades it, 
hang upon the answer; but the rules of practical 
life must be deeply affected by it. 

The belief in a demonic world is inculcated 
throughout the Gospels and the rest of the books 
of the New Testament; it pervades the whole 
patristic literature ; it colours the theory and the 
practice of every Christian church down to modern 
times. Indeed, I doubt, if even now, there is 
any church which, officially, departs from such a 
fundamental doctrine of primitive Christianity as 
the existence, in addition to the Cosmos with 
which natural knowledge is conversant, of a world 
of spirits; that is to say, of intelligent agents, not 
subject to the physical or mental limitations of 
humanity, but nevertheless competent to interfere, 
to an undefined extent, with the ordinary course of 
both physical and mental phenomena. 

More especially is this conception fundamental 
for the authors of the Gospels. Without the belief 
that the present world, and particularly that part 
of it which is constituted by human society, has 
been given over, since the Fall, to the influence 


PREFACE 


XV 


of wicked and malignant spiritual beings, governed 
and directed by a supreme devil—the moral 
antithesis and enemy of the supreme God— 
their theory of salvation by the Messiah falls to 
pieces. “ To this end was the Son of God mani¬ 
fested, that he might destroy the works of the 
devil.” 1 

The half-hearted religiosity of latter-day Chris¬ 
tianity may choose to ignore the fact; but it 
remains none the less true, that he who refuses to 
accept the demonology of the Gospels rejects the 
revelation of a spiritual world, made in them, as 
much as if he denied the existence of such a person 
as Jesus of Nazareth; and deserves, as much as any 
one can do, to be ear-marked “infidel” by our 
gentle shepherds. 

Now that which I thought it desirable to make 
perfectly clear, on my own account, and for the 
sake of those who find their capacity of belief in 
the Gospel theory of the universe failing them, is 
the fact, that, in my judgment, the demonology of 
primitive Christianity is totally devoid of founda¬ 
tion ; and that no man, who is guided by the 
rules of investigation which are found to lead 
to the discovery of truth in other matters, not 
merely of science, but in the everyday affairs of 
life, will arrive at any other conclusion. To those 
who profess to be otherwise guided, I have nothing 
1 1 John iii. 8. 


XVI 


PREFACE 


to say; but to beg them to go their own way and 
leave me to mine. 

I think it may be as well to repeat what I have 
said, over and over again, elsewhere, that a priori 
notions, about the possibility, or the impossibility,, 
of the existence of a world of spirits, such as that 
presupposed by genuine Christianity, have no 
influence on my mind. The question for me is 
purely one of evidence : is the evidence adequate 
to bear out the theory, or is it not? In my 
judgment it is not only inadequate, but quite 
absurdly insufficient. And on that ground, I 
should feel compelled to reject the theory; even 
if there were no positive grounds for adopting a 
totally different conception of the Cosmos. 

For most people, the question of the evidence 
of the existence of a demonic world, in the lonof 
run, resolves itself into that of the trustworthiness 
of the Gospels; first, as to the objective truth 
of that which they narrate on this topic; second, 
as to the accuracy of the interpretation which 
their authors put upon these objective facts. For 
example, with respect to the Gadarene miracle, it 
is one question whether, at a certain time and 
place, a raving madman became sane, and a herd 
of swine rushed into the lake of Tiberias; and 
quite another, whether the cause of these occur¬ 
rences was the transmigration of certain devils 
from the man into the pigs. And again, it is one 
question whether Jesus made a long oration on a 


PREFACE 


XVII 


certain occasion, mentioned in the first Gospel; 
altogether another, whether more or fewer of the 
propositions contained in the “ Sermon on the 
Mount ” were uttered on that occasion. One may 
give an affirmative answer to one of each of these 
pairs of questions and a negative to the other: one 
may affirm all, or deny all. 

In considering the historical value of any four 
documents, proof when they were written and 
who wrote them is, no doubt, highly important. 
For if proof exists, that A B C and D wrote them, 
and that they were intelligent persons, writing 
independently and without prejudice, about facts 
within their own knowledge—their statements 
must need be worthy of the most attentive con¬ 
sideration. 1 But, even ecclesiastical tradition does 
not assert that either “ Mark ” or “ Luke ” wrote 
from his own knowledge—indeed “ Luke ” ex¬ 
pressly asserts he did not. I cannot discover that 
any competent authority now maintains that the 
apostle Matthew wrote the Gospel which passes 
under his name. And whether the apostle John 
had, or had not, anything to do with the fourth 
Gospel; and if he had, what his share amounted 
to; are, as everybody who has attended to these 
matters knows, questions still hotly disputed, and 
with regard to which the extant evidence can 

1 Not necessarily of more than this. A few centuries ago the 
twelve most intelligent and impartial men to be found in 
England, would have independently testified that the sun 
moves, from east to west, across the heavens every day. 

115 


4f 


PREFACE 


xviii 

hardly carry no impartial judge beyond the 
admission of a possibility this way or that. 

Thus, nothing but a balancing of very dubious 
probabilities is to be attained by approaching 
the question from this side. It is otherwise if 
we make the documents tell their own story: if 
we study them, as we study fossils, to discover in¬ 
ternal evidence of when they arose, and how they 
have come to be. That really fruitful line of in¬ 
quiry has led to the statement and the discussion 
of what is known as the Synoptic Problem. 

In the Essays (VII.—XI.) which deal with the 
consequences of the application of the agnostic 
principle to Christian Evidences, contained in this 
volume, there are several references to the results 
of the attempts which have been made, during 
the last hundred years, to solve this problem. 
And, though it has been clearly stated and 
discussed, in works accessible to, and intelligible 
by, every English reader, 1 it may be well that I 
should here set forth a very brief exposition of 
the matters of fact out of which the problem has 
arisen ; and of some consequences, which, as I con¬ 
ceive, must be admitted if the facts are accepted. 

These undisputed and, apparently, indisputable 
data may be thus stated : 

I. The three books of which an ancient, but 

1 Nowhere more concisely and clearly than in Dr. Sutherland 
Black’s article “Gospels ” in Chambers’s Encyclopcedia. Refer¬ 
ences are given to the more elaborate discussions of the problem. 


PREFACE 


XIX 


very questionable, ecclesiastical tradition asserts 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke to be the authors, 
agree, not only in presenting the same general 
view, or Synopsis , of the nature and the order 
of the events narrated; but, to a remarkable 
extent, the very words which they employ 
coincide. 

II. Nevertheless, there are many equally marked, 
and some irreconcilable, differences between 
them. Narratives, verbally identical in some por¬ 
tions, diverge more or less in others. The order 
in which they occur in one, or in two, Gospels 
may be changed in another. In “ Matthew ” and 
in “ Luke ” events of great importance make their 
appearance, where the story of “ Mark ” seems to 
leave no place for them; and, at the beginning and 
the end of the two former Gospels, there is a 
great amount of matter of which there is no 
trace in “Mark.” 

III. Obvious and highly important differences, 
in style and substance, separate the three 
“ Synoptics,” taken together, from the fourth 
Gospel, connected, by ecclesiastical tradition, with 
the name of the apostle John. In its philosophical 
proemium; in the conspicuous absence of exorcistic 
miracles; in the self-assertive theosophy of the 
long and diffuse monologues, which are so utterly 
unlike the brief and pregnant utterances of Jesus 
recorded in the Synoptics; in the assertion that 
the crucifixion took place before the Passover, 


XX 


PREFACE 


which involves the denial, by implication, of the 
truth of the Synoptic story—to mention only a 
few particulars—the “ Johan nine” Gospel presents 
a wide divergence from the other three. 

IV. If the mutual resemblances and differences 
of the Synoptic Gospels are closely considered, a 
curious result comes out; namely, that each may 
be analyzed into four components. The first of 
these consists of passages, to a greater or less 
extent verbally identical, which occur in all three 
Gospels. If this triple tradition is separated 
from the rest it will be found to comprise: 

a . A narrative, of a somewhat broken and 
anecdotic aspect, which covers the period from the 
appearance of John the Baptist to the discovery 
of the emptiness of the tomb, on the first day 
of the week, some six-and-thirty hours after 
the crucifixion. 

b. An apocalyptic address. 

c. Parables and brief discourses, or rather, 
centos of religious and ethical exhortations and 
injunctions. 

The second and the third set of components of 
each Gospel present equally close resemblances to 
passages, which are found in only one of the other 
Gospels; therefore it may be said that, for them, 
the tradition is double. The fourth component 
is peculiar to each Gospel; it is a single tradition 
and has no representative in the others. 

To put the facts in another way: each Gospel 


PREFACE 


XXI 


is composed of a threefold tradition , two twofold 
traditions , and one peculiar tradition. If the 
Gospels were the work of totally independent 
writers, it would follow that there are three wit¬ 
nesses for the statements in the first tradition; 
two for each of those in the second, and only one 
for those in the third. 

V. If the reader will now take up that ex¬ 
tremely instructive little book, Abbott and Rush- 
brooke’s “ Common Tradition ” he will easily 
satisfy himself that “ Mark ” has the remarkable 
structure just described. Almost the whole of 
this Gospel consists of the first component; 
namely, the threefold tradition. But in chap. i. 
23-28 he will discover an exorcistic story, 
not to be found in “Matthew,” but repeated, 
often word for word, in “ Luke.” This, therefore, 
belongs to one of the twofold traditions. In chap, 
viii. 1-10, on the other hand, there is a detailed 
account of the miracle of feeding the four thou¬ 
sand ; which is closely repeated in “ Matthew ” xv. 
32-39, but is not to be found in “ Luke.” This is 
an example of the other twofold tradition , possible 
in “ Mark.” Finally, the story of the blind man 
of Bethsaida, “ Mark ” viii. 22-26, is peculiar to 
“ Mark.” 

VI. Suppose that, A standing for the threefold 
tradition , or the matter common to all three Gos¬ 
pels ; we call the matter common to “ Mark ” and 
u Matthew ” only—B; that common to “ Mark ” 


xxii 


PREFACE 


and “ Luke ” only—C ; that common to “ Matthew n 
and “ Luke ” only—D ; while the peculiar com¬ 
ponents of “ Mark,” “ Matthew,” and “ Luke ” are 
severally indicated by E, F, G; then the structure 
of the Gospels may be represented thus: 

Components of “ Mark ” = A-fB-fC + E. 

„ “ Matthew ” = A + B -h D + F. 

„ “ Luke” = A + CiD + G. 

YII. The analysis of the Synoptic documents 
need be carried no further than this point, in 
order to suggest one extremely important, and, 
apparently unavoidable conclusion; and that is, 
that their authors were neither three independent 
witnesses of the things narrated; nor, for the 
parts of the narrative about which all agree, that 
is to say, the threefold tradition , did they employ 
independent sources of information. It is sim¬ 
ply incredible that each of three independent 
witnesses of any series of occurrences should 
tell a story so similar, not only in arrangement 
and in small details, but in words, to that of 
each of the others. 

Hence it follows, either that the Synoptic 
writers have, mediately or immediately, copied 
one from the other: or that the three have drawn 
from a common source; that is to say, from one 
arrangement of similar traditions (whether oral 
or written); though that arrangement may have 



PREFACE xxiii 

been extant in three or more, somewhat different 
versions. 

VIII. The suppositions (a) that “Mark” had 
“ Matthew ” and “ Luke ” before him ; and (b) 
that either of the two latter was acquainted with 
the work of the other, would seem to involve some 
singular consequences. 

a. The second Gospel is saturated with the 
lowest supernaturalism. Jesus is exhibited 
as a wonder-worker and exorcist of the first rank. 
The earliest public recognition of the Messiahship 
of Jesus comes from an “unclean spirit”; he him¬ 
self is made to testify to the occurrence of the 
miraculous feeding twice over. 

The purpose with which “ Mark ” sets out is 
to show forth Jesus as the Son of God, and it is 
suggested, if not distinctly stated, that he ac¬ 
quired this character at his baptism by John. 
The absence of any reference to the miraculous 
events of the infancy, detailed by “Matthew” 
and “Luke;” or to the appearances after the 
discovery of the emptiness of the tomb; is unin¬ 
telligible, if “ Mark ” knew anything about them, 
or believed in the miraculous conception. The 
second Gospel is no summary: “ Mark ” can find 
room for the detailed story, irrelevant to his main 
purpose, of the beheading of John the Baptist, and 
his miraculous narrations are crowded with minute 
particulars. Is it to be imagined that, with 
the supposed apostolic authority of Matthew 


XXIV 


PREFACE 


before him, he could leave out the miraculous 
conception of Jesus and the ascension? Further, 
ecclesiastical tradition would have us believe that 
Mark wrote down his recollections of what Peter 
taught. Did Peter then omit to mention these 
matters? Did the fact testified by the oldest 
authority extant, that the first appearance of the 
risen Jesus was to himself seem not worth men¬ 
tioning ? Did he really fail to speak of the great 
position in the Church solemnly assigned to him by 
Jesus? The alternative would seem to be the 
impeachment either of Mark’s memory, or of his 
judgment. But Mark’s memory, is so good that 
he can recollect how, on the occasion of the stilling 
of the waves, Jesus was asleep “ on the cushion,” 
he remembers that the woman with the issue had 
“ spent all she had ” on her physicians; that 
there was not room “ even about the door ” on a 
certain occasion at Capernaum. And it is surely 
hard to believe that “ Mark ” should have failed to 
recollect occurrences of infinitely greater moment, 
or that he should have deliberately left them out, 
as things not worthy of mention. 

b. The supposition that “ Matthew ” was 
acquainted with “ Luke,” or “ Luke” with 
“Matthew” has equally grave implications. If 
that be so, the one who used the other could have 
had but a poor opinion of his predecessor’s his¬ 
torical veracity. If, as most experts agree, “ Luke ” 
is later than “ Matthew,” it is clear that he does 


PREFACE 


XXV 


not credit “ Matthew’s ” account of the infancy; 
does not believe the “Sermon on the Mount” 
as given by Matthew was preached; does not be¬ 
lieve in the two feeding miracles, to which Jesus 
himself is made to refer; wholly discredits 
“ Matthew’s ” account of the events after the 
crucifixion; and thinks it not worth while to 
notice “ Matthew’s ” grave admission that “ some 
doubted.” 

IX. None of these troublesome consequences 
pursue the hypothesis that the threefold tradition , 
in one, or more, Greek versions, was extant before 
either of the canonical Synoptic Gospels ; and that 
it furnished the fundamental framework of their 
several narratives. Where and when the three¬ 
fold narrative arose, there is no positive evidence; 
though it is obviously probable that the traditions 
it embodies, and perhaps many others, took their 
rise in Palestine and spread thence to Asia Minor, 
Greece, Egypt and Italy, in the track of the early 
missionaries. Nor is it less likely that they 
formed part of the “ didaskalia ” of the primitive 
Nazarene and Christian communities. 1 

X. The interest which attaches to “Mark” 
arises from the fact that it seems to present this 

1 Those who regard the Apocalyptic discourse as a “vaticina¬ 
tion after the event ” may draw conclusions therefrom as to the 
date of the Gospels in which its several forms occur. But the 
assumption is surely dangerous, from an apologetic point of 
view, since it begs the question as to the unhistorical character 
of this solemn prophecy. 


XXVI 


PREFACE 


early, probably earliest, Greek Gospel narrative, 
with least addition, or modification. If, as appears 
likely from some internal evidences, it was com¬ 
piled for the use of the Christian sodalities in 
Rome; and that it was accepted by them as an 
adequate account of the life and work of Jesus, it 
is evidence of the most valuable kind respecting 
their beliefs and the limits of dogma, as conceived 
by them. 

In such case, a good Roman Christian of that 
epoch might know nothing of the doctrine of the 
incarnation, as taught by “ Matthew ” and “ Luke ”; 
still less of the “logos” doctrine of “John”; neither 
need he have believed anything more than the 
simple fact of the resurrection. It was open to 
him to believe it either corporeal, or spiritual. He 
would never have heard of the power of the keys 
bestowed upon Peter; nor have had brought to his 
mind so much as a suggestion of trinitarian doc¬ 
trine. He might be a rigidly monotheistic Judseo'- 
Christian, and consider himself bound by the 
law: he might be a Gentile Pauline convert, 
neither knowing of nor caring for such restrictions. 
In neither case would he find in “Mark” any 
serious stumbling-block. In fact, persons of all 
the categories admitted to salvation by Justin, in 
the middle of the second century, 1 could accept 
“ Mark ” from beginning to end. It may well be, 
that, in this wide adaptability, backed by the 
1 See p. 287 of this volume. 


PREFACE xxvii 

authority of the metropolitan church, there lies 
the reason for the fact of the preservation of 
“ Mark,” notwithstanding its limited and dogma¬ 
tically colourless character, as compared with the 
Gospels of “ Luke ” and “ Matthew.” 

XI. “ Mark,” as we have seen, contains a re¬ 
latively small body of ethical and religious in¬ 
struction and only a few parables. Were these 
all that existed in the primitive threefold tradi¬ 
tion ? Were none others current in the Roman 
communities, at the time “ Mark ” wrote, supposing 
he wrote in Rome ? Or, on the other hand, was 
there extant, as early as the time at which 
“ Mark ” composed his Greek edition of the 
primitive Evangel, one or more collections of 
parables and teachings, such as those which form 
the bulk of the twofold tradition, common ex¬ 
clusively to “ Matthew ” and “ Luke,” and are 
also found in their single traditions ? Many have 
assumed this, or these, collections to be identical 
with, or at any rate based upon, the “ logia,” of 
which ecclesiastical tradition says, that they were 
written in Aramaic by Matthew, and that every¬ 
body translated them as he could. 

Here is the old difficulty again. If such ma¬ 
terials were known to “ Mark,” what imaginable 
reason could he have for not using them ? Surely 
displacement of the long episode of John the Bap¬ 
tist—even perhaps of the story of the Gadarene 
swine—by portions of the Sermon on the Mount or 


xxviii PREFACE 

by one or two of the beautiful parables in the 
twofold and single traditions would have been 
great improvements; and might have been 
effected, even though “ Mark ” was as much 
pressed for space as some have imagined. But 
there is no ground for that imagination; Mark 
has actually found room for four or five parables; 
why should he not have given the best, if he had 
known of them ? Admitting he was the mere 
pedissequus et breviator of Matthew, that even 
Augustine supposed him to be, what could induce 
him to omit the Lord’s Prayer ? 

Whether more or less of the materials of the two¬ 
fold tradition D, and of the peculiar traditions F and 
G, were or were not current in some of the com¬ 
munities, as early as, or perhaps earlier than, the 
triple tradition, it is not necessary for me to discuss; 
nor to consider those solutions of the Synoptic 
problem which assume that it existed earlier, and 
was already combined with more or less narrative. 
Those who are working out the final solution of the 
Synoptic problem are taking into account, more 
than hitherto, the possibility that the widely 
separated Christian communities of Palestine, 
Asia Minor, Egypt, and Italy, especially after the 
Jewish war of A.D. 66-70, may have found them¬ 
selves in possession of very different traditional 
materials. Many circumstances tend to the con¬ 
clusion that, in Asia Minor, even the narrative 
part of the threefold tradition had a formidable 


PREFACE 


XXIX 


rival; and that, around this second narrative, 
teaching traditions of a totally different order 
from those in the Synoptics, grouped themselves; 
and, under the influence of converts imbued more 
or less with the philosophical speculations of the 
time, eventually took shape in the fourth Gospel 
and its associated literature. 

XII. But it is unnecessary, and it would he 
out of place, for me to attempt to do more than 
indicate the existence of these complex and diffi¬ 
cult questions. My purpose has been to make it 
clear that the Synoptic problem must force itself 
upon every one who studies the Gospels with 
attention; that the broad facts of the case, and 
some of the consequences deducible from these 
facts, are just as plain to the simple English 
reader as they are to the profoundest scholar. 

One of these consequences is that the three¬ 
fold tradition presents us with a narrative believed 
to be historically true, in all particulars, by the 
major part, if not the whole, of the Christian 
communities. That narrative is penetrated, from 
beginning to end, by the demonological beliefs of 
which the Gadarene story is a specimen; and, if 
the fourth Gospel indicates the existence of another 
and, in some respects, irreconcilably divergent 
narrative, in which the demonology retires into 
the background, it is none the less there. 

Therefore, the demonology is an integral and 
inseparable component of primitive Christianity. 


XXX 


PREFACE 


The farther back the origin of the gospels is 
dated, the stronger does the certainty of this con¬ 
clusion grow; and the more difficult it becomes to 
suppose that Jesus himself may not have shared 
the superstitious beliefs of his disciples. 

It further follows that those who accept devils, 
possession, and exorcism as essential elements 
of their conception of the spiritual world may 
consistently consider the testimony of the Gospels 
to be unimpeachable in respect of the information 
they give us respecting other matters which 
appertain to that world. 

Those who reject the gospel demonology, on 
the other hand, would seem to be as completely 
barred, as I feel myself to be, from professing to 
take the accuracy of that information for granted. 
If the threefold tradition is wrong about one 
fundamental topic, it may be wrong about another, 
while the authority of the single traditions, often 
mutually contradictory as they are, becomes a 
vanishing quantity. 

It really is unreasonable to ask any rejector of 
the demonology to say more with respect to those 
other matters, than that the statements regarding 
them may be true, or may be false; and that the 
ultimate decision, if it is to be favourable, must 
depend on the production of testimony of a very 
different character from that of the writers of the 
four gospels. Until such evidence is brought for¬ 
ward, that refusal of assent, with willingness to 


PREFACE 


XXXI 


re-opcn the question, on cause shown, which is 
what I mean by Agnosticism, is, for me the only 
course open. 

A verdict of “ not proven ” is undoubtedly 
unsatisfactory and essentially provisional, so far 
forth as the subject of the trial is capable of being 
dealt with by due process of reason. 

Those who are of opinion that the historical 
realities at the root of Christianity, lie beyond the 
jurisdiction of science, need not be considered. 
Those who are convinced that the evidence is, and 
must always remain, insufficient to support any 
definite conclusion, are justified in ignoring the 
subject. They must be content to put up with that 
reproach of being mere destroyers, of which Strauss 
speaks. They may say that there are so many 
problems which are and must remain insoluble, 
that the “burden of the mystery” “of all this 
unintelligible world” is not appreciably affected 
by one more or less. 

For myself, I must confess that the problem of 
the origin of such very remarkable historical 
phenomena as the doctrines, and the social 
organization, which, in their broad features cer¬ 
tainly existed, and were in a state of rapid 
development, within a hundred years of the 
crucifixion of Jesus; and which have steadily 
prevailed against all rivals, among the most intelli¬ 
gent and civilized nations in the world ever since, 


XXX11 


PREFACE 


is, and always has been, profoundly interesting; 
and, considering how recent the really scientific 
study of that problem, and how great the progress 
made during the last half century in supplying the 
conditions for a positive solution of the problem, 
I cannot doubt that the attainment of such a 
solution is a mere question of time. 

I am well aware that it has lain far beyond my 
powers to take any share in this great under¬ 
taking. All that I can hope is to have done 
somewhat towards “ the preparation of those who 
have ceased to be contented with the old and find 
no satisfaction in half measures ” : perhaps, also, 
something towards the lessening of that great 
proportion of my countrymen, whose eminent 
characteristic it is that they find full “ full satis¬ 
faction in half measures.” T. H. H. 

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, ' 

December 4th, 1893. 


CONTENTS 


i 

PAGE 

PROLOGDE . 1 

(Controverted Questions, 1892). 

II 

SCIENTIFIC AND PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM [1887] . . 59 

% 

III 

SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE [1887]. 90 

IV 

AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY [1887].126 

V 

THE VALUE OF WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS [1889] . . 160 


116 





XXXIV 


CONTENTS 


VI 

PAGF 

POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES [1891].192 

VII 

AGNOSTICISM [1889]. 209 

VIII 

AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER [1889].263 

IX 

AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY [1889].809 

X 

THE KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE [1890].366 

/ 

XI 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF MR. GLADSTONE’S CONTROVERSIAL 

METHODS [1891].393 








I 

PROLOGUE 

[Controverted Questions , 1892] 

Le plus grand service qu’on puisse rendre & la science est d’y 
faire place nette avant d’y rien construire.— Cuvier. 

Most of the Essays comprised in the present 
volume have been written during the last six or 
seven years, without premeditated purpose or 
intentional connection, in reply to attacks upon 
doctrines which I hold to be well founded; or in 
refutation of allegations respecting matters lying 
within the province of natural knowledge, which I 
believe to be erroneous; and they bear the mark 
of their origin in the controversial tone which 
pervades them. 

Of polemical writing, as of other kinds of war¬ 
fare, I think it may be said, that it is often useful, 
sometimes necessary, and always more or less of 
an evil. It is useful, when it attracts attention to 
topics which might otherwise be neglected; and 
when, as does sometimes happen, those who come 
to see a contest remain to think. It is necessary, 


2 


PROLOGUE 


I 


when the interests of truth and of justice are at 
stake. It is an evil, in so far as controversy 
always tends to degenerate into quarrelling, to 
swerve from the great issue of what is right and 
what is wrong to the very small question of who 
is right and who is wrong. I venture to hope 
that the useful and the necessary were more 
conspicuous than the evil attributes of literary 
militancy, when these papers were first published; 
but I have had some hesitation about reprinting 
them. If I may judge by my own taste, few 
literary dishes are less appetising than cold 
controversy; moreover, there is an air of unfair¬ 
ness about the presentation of only one side of 
a discussion, and a flavour of unkindness in the 
reproduction of “ winged words/’ which, however 
appropriate at the time of their utterance, would 
find a still more appropriate place in oblivion. 
Yet, since I could hardly ask those who have 
honoured me by their polemical attentions to 
confer lustre on this collection, by permitting me 
to present their lucubrations along with my own ; 
and since it would be a manifest wrong to them to 
deprive their, by no means rare, vivacities of 
language of such justification as they may derive 
from similar freedoms on my part; I came to the 
conclusion that my best course was to leave the 
essays just as they were written; 1 assuring my 

1 With a few exceptions, which are duly noted when they 
amount to more than verbal corrections. 


I 


PROLOGUE 


3 


honourable adversaries that any heat of which 
signs may remain was generated, in accordance 
with the law of the conservation of energy, by the 
force of their own blows, and has long since been 
dissipated into space. 

But, however the polemical concomitants of 
these discussions may be regarded—or better, dis¬ 
regarded—there is no doubt either about the im¬ 
portance of the topics of which they treat, or 
as to the public interest in the “ Controverted 
Questions ” with which they deal. Or rather, 
the Controverted Question; for disconnected as 
these pieces may, perhaps, appear to be, they are, 
in fact, concerned only with different aspects of a 
single problem, with which thinking men have 
been occupied, ever since they began seriously to 
consider the wonderful frame of things in which 
their lives are set, and to seek for trustworthy 
guidance among its intricacies. 

Experience speedily taught them that the 
shifting scenes of the world’s stage have a perma¬ 
nent background ; that there is order amidst the 
seeming confusion, and that many events take 
place according to unchanging rules. To this 
region of familiar steadiness and customary regu¬ 
larity they gave the name of Nature. But, at the 
same time, their infantile and untutored reason, 
little more, as yet, than the playfellow of the 
imagination, led them to believe that this tangible, 
commonplace, orderly world of Nature was sur- 


4 


PROLOGUE 


rounded and interpenetrated by another intangible 
and mysterious world, no more bound by fixed 
rules than, as they fancied, were the thoughts and 
passions which coursed through their minds and 
seemed to exercise an intermittent and capricious 
rule over their bodies. They attributed to the 
entities, with which they peopled this dim and 
dreadful region, an unlimited amount of that 
power of modifying the course of events of which 
they themselves possessed a small share, and 
thus came to regard them as not merely beyond, 
but above, Nature. 

Hence arose the conception of a “ Supernature ” 
antithetic to “ Nature ”—the primitive dualism of 
a natural world “ fixed in fate ” and a super¬ 
natural, left to the free play of volition—which 
has pervaded all later speculation and, for thou¬ 
sands of years, has exercised a profound influence 
on practice. For it is obvious that, on this theory 
of the Universe, the successful conduct of life 
must demand careful attention to both worlds; 
and, if either is to be neglected, it may be safer 
that it should be Nature. In any given contin¬ 
gency, it must doubtless be desirable to know 
what may be expected to happen in the ordinary 
course of things; but it must be quite as 
necessary to have some inkling of the line likely 
to be taken by supernatural agencies able, and 
possibly willing, to suspend or reverse that course. 
Indeed, logically developed, the dualistic theory 


I 


PKOLOGUE 


5 


must needs end in almost exclusive attention to 
Supernature, and in trust that its over-ruling 
strength will be exerted in favour of those who 
stand well with its denizens. On the other hand, 
the lessons of the great schoolmaster, experience, 
have hardly seemed to accord with this conclusion. 
They have taught, with considerable emphasis, 
that it does not answer to neglect Nature; and 
that, on the whole, the more attention paid to her 
dictates the better men fare. 

Thus the theoretical antithesis brought about 
a practical antagonism. From the earliest times 
of which we have any knowledge, Naturalism 
and Supernaturalism have consciously, or uncon¬ 
sciously, competed and struggled with one an¬ 
other; and the varying fortunes of the contest 
are written in the records of the course of civili-* 
sation, from those of Egypt and Babylonia, six 
thousand years ago, down to those of our own 
time and people. 

These records inform us that, so far as men 
have paid attention to Nature, they have been 
rewarded for their pains. They have developed 
the Arts which have furnished the conditions of 
civilised existence; and the Sciences, which have 
been a progressive revelation of reality and have 
afforded the best discipline of the mind in the 
methods of discovering truth. They have accumu¬ 
lated a vast body of universally accepted know¬ 
ledge ; and the conceptions of man and of society, 


6 


PROLOGUE 


I 


of morals and of law, based upon that knowledge, 
are every day more and more, either openly or 
tacitly, acknowledged to be the foundations of 
right action. 

^History also tells us that the field of the 
supernatural has rewarded its cultivators with a 
haivest, perhaps not less luxuriant, but of a 
different character. It has produced an almost 
infinite diversity of Religions. These, if we set 
aside the ethical concomitants upon which natural 
knowledge also has a claim, are composed of 
information about Supernature; they tell us of 
the attributes of supernatural beings, of their 
relations with Nature, and of the operations by 
which their interference with the ordinary course 
of events can be secured or averted. It does 
*not appear, however, that supernaturalists have 
attained to any agreement about these matters, or 
that history indicates a widening of the influence 
of supernaturalism on practice, with the onward 
flow of time. On the contrary, the various 
religions are, to a great extent, mutually ex¬ 
clusive ; and their adherents delight in charging 
each other, not merely with error, but with 
criminality, deserving and ensuing punishment 
of infinite severity. In singular contrast with 
natural knowledge, again, the acquaintance of 
mankind with the supernatural appears the more 
extensive and the more exact, and the influence 
of supernatural doctrines upon conduct the greater, 


I 


PKOLOGUE 


7 


the further back we go in time and the lower the 
stage of civilisation submitted to investigation. 
Historically, indeed, there would seem to be an 
inverse relation between supernatural and natural 
knowledge. As the latter has widened, gained in 
precision and in trustworthiness, so has the 
former shrunk, grown vague and questionable ; as 
the one has more and more filled the sphere of 
action, so has the other retreated into the region 
of meditation, or vanished behind the screen of 
mere verbal recognition. 

Whether this difference of the fortunes of 
Naturalism and of Supernaturalism is an indica¬ 
tion of the progress, or of the regress, of 
humanity; of a fall from, or an advance towards, 
the higher life; is a matter of opinion. The point 
to which I wish to direct attention is that the. 
difference exists and is making itself felt. Men 
are growing to be seriously alive to the fact that 
the historical evolution' of humanity, which is 
generally, and I venture to think not unreason¬ 
ably, regarded as progress, has been, and is being, 
accompanied by a co-ordinate elimination of the 
supernatural from its originally large occupation of 
men’s thoughts. The question—How far is this 
process to go ?—is, in my apprehension, the 
Controverted Question of our time. 

Controversy on this matter—prolonged, bitter, 
and fought out with the weapons ©f the flesh, as 


8 


PROLOGUE 


I 


well as with those of the spirit—is no new thing 
to Englishmen. We have been more or less 
occupied with it these five hundred years. And, 
during that time, we have made attempts to 
establish a modus vivendi between the antagonists, 
some of which have had a world-wide influence; 
though, unfortunately, none have proved univers¬ 
ally and permanently satisfactor 3 T . 

In the fourteenth century, the controverted 
question among us was, whether certain portions 
of the Supernaturalism of mediaeval Christianity 
were well-founded. John Wicliff proposed a 
solution of the problem which, in the course of 
the following two hundred years, acquired wide 
popularity and vast historical importance: Lollards, 
Hussites, Lutherans, Calvinists, Zwinglians, Socin- 
ians, and Anabaptists, whatever their disagree¬ 
ments, concurred in the proposal to reduce the 
Supernaturalism of Christianity within the limits 
sanctioned by the Scriptures. None of the chiefs 
of Protestantism called in question either the 
supernatural origin and infallible authority of the 
Bible, or the exactitude of the account of the 
supernatural world given in its pages. In fact, 
they could not afford to entertain any doubt 
about these points, since the infallible Bible was 
the fulcrum of the lever with which they were 
endeavouring to upset the Chair of St. Peter. 
The “ freedom of private judgment ” which they 
proclaimed, meant no more, in practice, than 


I 


PROLOGUE 


permission to themselves to make free with the 
public judgment of the Roman Church, in respect 
of the canon and of the meaning to be attached 
to the words of the canonical books. Private 
judgment—that is to say, reason—was (theoreti¬ 
cally, at any rate) at liberty to decide what books 
were and what were not to take the rank of 
“ Scripture ” ; and to determine the sense of any 
passage in such books. But this sense, once 
ascertained to the mind of the sectary, was to be 
taken for pure truth—for the very word of God. 
The controversial efficiency of the principle of 
biblical infallibility lay in the fact that the con¬ 
servative adversaries of the Reformers were not in 
a position to contravene it without entangling 
themselves in serious difficulties ; while, since 
both Papists and Protestants agreed in taking 
efficient measures to stop the mouths of any more 
radical critics, these did not count. 

The impotence of their adversaries, however, did 
not remove the inherent weakness of the position 
of the Protestants. The dogma of the infallibility 
of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that 
of the infallibility of the Pope. If the former is 
held by “ faith,” then the latter may be. If the 
latter is to be accepted, or rejected, by private 
judgment, why not the former? Even if the 
Bible could be proved anywhere to assert its own 
infallibility, the value of that self-assertion to 
those who dispute the point is not obvious. On 


10 


PROLOGUE 


I 


the other hand, if the infallibility of the Bible 
was rested on that of a “ primitive Church,” the 
admission that the “ Church ” was formerly 
infallible was awkward in the extreme for those 
who denied its present infallibility. Moreover, no 
sooner was the Protestant principle applied to 
practice, than it became evident that even an 
infallible text, when manipulated by private 
judgment, will impartially countenance contra¬ 
dictory deductions; and furnish forth creeds and 
confessions as diverse as the quality and the 
information of the intellects which exercise, and 
the prejudices and passions which sway, such 
judgments. Every sect, confident in the deriva¬ 
tive infallibility of its wire-drawing of infallible 
materials, was ready to supply its contingent of 
martyrs ; and to enable history, once more, to 
illustrate the truth, that steadfastness under 
persecution says much for the sincerity and still 
more for the tenacity, of the believer, but very 
little- for the objective truth of that which he 
believes. No martyrs have sealed their faith 
with their blood more steadfastly than the 
Anabaptists. 

Last, but not least, the Protestant principle 
contained within itself the germs of the destruc¬ 
tion of the finality, which the Lutheran, Calvin- 
istic, and other Protestant Churches fondly 
imagined they had reached. Since their creeds 
were professedly based on the canonical Scriptures, 


I 


'PROLOGUE 


11 


it followed that, in the long run, whoso settled 
the canon defined the creed. If the private 
judgment of Luther might legitimately conclude 
that the epistle of James was contemptible, while 
the epistles of Paul contained the very essence of 
Christianity, it must be permissible for some 
other private judgment, on as good or as bad 
grounds, to reverse these conclusions; the critical 
process which excluded the Apocrypha could not 
be barred, at any rate by people who rejected 
the authority of the Church, from extending its 
operations to Daniel, the Canticles, and Ecclesi¬ 
astes ; nor, having got so far, was it easy to allege 
any good ground for staying the further progress 
of criticism. In fact, the logical development of 
Protestantism could not fail to lay the authority 
of the Scriptures at the feet of Reason ; and, 
in the hands of latitudinarian and rationalistic 
theologians, the despotism of the Bible was 
rapidly converted into an extremely limited 
monarchy. Treated with as much respect as 
ever, the sphere of its practical authority was 
minimised ; and its decrees were valid only so far 
as they were countersigned by common sense, the 
responsible minister. 

The champions of Protestantism are much 
given to glorify the Reformation of the sixteenth 
century as the emancipation of Reason ; but it 
may be doubted if their contention has any solid 
giound; while there is a good deal of evidence to 


12 


PROLOGUE 


I 


show, that aspirations after intellectual freedom 
had nothing whatever to do with the movement. 
Dante, who struck the Papacy as hard blows as 
Wicliff; Wicliff himself and Luther himself, when 
they began their work ; were far enough from 
any intention of meddling with even the most 
irrational of the dogmas of mediaeval Super¬ 
naturalism. From Wicliff to Socinus, or even to 
Miinzer, Rothmann, and John of Leyden, I fail to 
find a trace of any desire to set reason free. The 
most that can be discovered is a proposal to 
change masters. From being the slave of the 
Papacy the intellect was to become the serf of the 
Bible ; or, to speak more accurately, of somebody’s 
interpretation of the Bible, which, rapidly shifting 
its attitude from the humility of a private judg¬ 
ment to the arrogant Caesaro-papistry of a state- 
enforced creed, had no more hesitation about 
forcibly extinguishing opponent private judgments 
and judges, than had the old-fashioned Pontiff- 
papistry. 

It was the iniquities, and not the irrationalities, 
of the Papal system that lay at the bottom of the 
revolt of the laity; which was, essentially, an 
attempt to shake off the intolerable burden of 
certain practical deductions from a Supernatural¬ 
ism in which everybody, in principle, acquiesced. 
What was the gain to intellectual freedom of 
abolishing transubstantiation, image worship, in¬ 
dulgences, ecclesiastical infallibility; if consub- 


I 


PROLOGUE 


13 


stantiation, real-unreal presence mystifications, 
the bibliolatry, the “ inner light ” pretensions, and 
the demonology, which are fruits of the same 
supernaturalistic tree, remained in enjoyment of 
the spiritual and temporal support of a new 
infallibility ? One does not free a prisoner by 
merely scraping away the rust from his shackles. 

It will be asked, perhaps, was not the Reforma¬ 
tion one of the products of that great outbreak of 
many-sided free mental activity included under 
the general head of the Renascence ? Melanch- 
thon, Ulrich von Hutten, Beza, were they not all 
humanists ? Was not the arch-humanist, Erasmus, 
fautor-in-chief of the Reformation, until he got 
frightened and basely deserted it ? 

From the language of Protestant historians, it 
would seem that they often forget that Reforma¬ 
tion and Protestantism are by no means con¬ 
vertible terms. There were plenty of sincere and 
indeed zealous reformers, before, during, and 
after the birth and growth of Protestantism, who 
would have nothing to do with it. Assuredly, 
the rejuvenescence of science and of art; the 
widening of the field of Nature by geographical 
and astronomical discovery; the revelation of the 
noble ideals of antique literature by the revival of 
classical learning ; the stir of thought, throughout 
all classes of society, by the printers’ work, 
loosened traditional bonds and weakened the hold 
of mediaeval Supernaturalism. In the interests 


14 


PROLOGUE 


I 


of liberal culture and of national welfare, the 
humanists were eager to lend a hand to anything 
which tended to the discomfiture of their sworn 
enemies, the monks, and they willingly supported 
every movement in the direction of weakening 
ecclesiastical interference with civil life. But the 
bond of a common enemy was the only real tie 
between the humanist and the protestant; their 
alliance was bound to be of short duration, and, 
sooner or later, to be replaced by internecine 
warfare. The goal of the humanists, whether 
they were aware of it or not, was the attainment 
of the complete intellectual freedom of the 
antique philosopher, than which nothing could be 
more abhorrent to a Luther, a Calvin, a Beza, or 
a Zwingli. 

The key to the comprehension of the conduct 
of Erasmus, seems to me to lie in the clear appre¬ 
hension of this fact. That he was a man of many 
weaknesses may be true; in fact, he was quite 
aware of them and professed himself no hero. 
But he never deserted that reformatory move¬ 
ment which he originally contemplated ; and it 
was impossible he should have deserted the 
specifically Protestant reformation in which he 
never took part. He was essentially a theological 
whig, to whom radicalism was as hateful as it is 
to all whigs; or, to borrow a still more appropriate 
comparison from modern times, a broad church¬ 
man who refused to enlist with either the High 


I 


PROLOGUE 


15 


Church or the Low Church zealots, and paid the 
penalty of being called coward, time-server and 
traitor, by both. Yet really there is a good deal 
in his pathetic remonstrance that he does not see 
why he is bound to become a martyr for that in 
which he does not believe ; and a fair consideration 
of the circumstances and the consequences of the 
Protestant reformation seems to me to go a long 
way towards justifying the course he adopted. 

Few men had better means of being acquainted 
with the condition of Europe ; none could be more 
competent to gauge the intellectual shallowness 
and self-contradiction of the Protestant criticism 
of Catholic doctrine; and to estimate, at its proper 
value, the fond imagination that the waters let 
out by the Renascence would come to rest amidst 
the blind alleys of the new ecclesiasticism. The 
bastard, whilom poor student and monk, become 
the familiar of bishops and princes, at home in all 
grades of society, could not fail to be aware of the 
gravity of the social position, of the dangers 
imminent from the profligacy and indifference of 
the ruling classes, no less than from the anarchical 
tendencies of the people who groaned under 
their oppression. The wanderer who had lived 
in Germany, in France, in England, in Italy, and 
who counted many of the best and most influen¬ 
tial men in each country among his friends, was 
not likely to estimate wrongly the enormous 
forces which were still at the command of the 


117 


16 


PROLOGUE 


I 


Papacy. Bad as the churchmen might be, the 
statesmen were worse ; and a person of far more 
sanguine temperament than Erasmus might have 
seen no hope for the future, except in gradually 
freeing the ubiquitous organisation of the Church 
from the corruptions which alone, as he imagined, 
prevented it from being as beneficent as it was 
powerful. The broad tolerance of the scholar and 
man of the world might well be revolted by the 
ruffianism, however genial, of one great light of 
Protestantism, and the narrow fanaticism, however 
learned and logical, of others; and to a cautious 
thinker, by whom, whatever his shortcomings, the 
ethical ideal of the Christian evangel was sin¬ 
cerely prized, it really was a fair question, 
whether it was worth while to bring about a 
political and social deluge, the end of which no 
mortal could foresee, for the purpose of setting up 
Lutheran, Zwinglian, and other Peterkins, in the 
place of the actual claimant to the reversion of 
the spiritual wealth of the Galilean fisherman. 

Let us suppose that, at the beginning of the 
Lutheran and Zwinglian movement, a vision of its 
immediate consequences had been granted to 
Erasmus; imagine that to the spectre of the 
fierce outbreak of Anabaptist communism, which 
opened the apocalypse, had succeeded, in shadowy 
procession, the reign of terror and of spoliation in 
England, with the judicial murders of his friends, 
More and Fisher; the bitter tyranny of evangel- 


I 


PROLOGUE 


17 


istic clericalism in Geneva and in Scotland; the 
long agony of religious wars, persecutions, and 
massacres, which devastated France and reduced 
Germany almost to savagery; finishing with the 
spectacle of Lutheranism in its native country 
sunk into mere dead Erastian formalism, before 
it was a century old; while Jesuitry triumphed 
over Protestantism in three-fourths of Europe, 
bringing in its train a recrudescence of all the 
corruptions Erasmus and his friends sought to 
abolish; might not he have quite honestly 
thought this a somewhat too heavy price to pay 
for Protestantism; more especially, since no one 
was in a better position than himself*to know 
how little the dogmatic foundation of the new 
confessions was able to bear the light which the 
inevitable progress of humanistic criticism would 
throw upon them ? As the wiser of his contem¬ 
poraries saw, Erasmus was, at heart, neither 
Protestant nor Papist, but an “ Independent 
Christian ”; and, as the wiser of his modern 
biographers have discerned, he was the precursor, 
not of sixteenth century reform, but of eighteenth 
century “ enlightenment ”; a sort of broad-church 
Voltaire, who held by his “Independent Christian¬ 
ity ” as stoutly as Voltaire by his Deism. 

In fact, the stream of the Renascence, which 
bore Erasmus along, left Protestantism stranded 
amidst the mudbanks of its articles and creeds: 
while its true course became visible to all men, 


18 


PROLOGUE 


I 


two centuries later. By this time, those in whom 
the movement of the Renascence was incarnate 
became aware what spirit they were of; and they 
attacked Supernaturalism in its Biblical strong¬ 
hold, defended by Protestants and Romanists 
with equal zeal. In the eyes of the “ Patriarch,” 
Ultramontanism, Jansenism, and Calvinism were 
merely three persons of the one “ Infame ” which 
it was the object of his life to crush. If he 
hated one more than another, it was probably the 
last; while D’Holbach, and the extreme left of 
the free-thinking host, were disposed to show no 
more mercy to Deism and Pantheism. 

The sceptical insurrection of the eighteenth 
century made a terrific noise and frightened not 
a few worthy people out of their wits ; but cool 
judges might have foreseen, at the outset, that 
the efforts of the later rebels were no more likely 
than those of the earlier, to furnish permanent 
resting-places for the spirit of scientific inquiry. 
However worthy of admiration may be the acute¬ 
ness, the common sense, the wit, the broad 
humanity, which abound in the writings of the 
best of the free-thinkers; there is rarely much to 
be said for their work as an example of the 
adequate treatment of a grave and difficult in¬ 
vestigation. I do not think any impartial judge 
will assert that, from this point of view, they are 
much better than their adversaries. It must be 
admitted that they share to the full the fatal 


X 


PROLOGUE 


10 


weakness of a priori philosophising, no less than 
the moral frivolity common to their age ; while a 
singular want of appreciation of history, as the 
record of the moral and social evolution of the 
human race, permitted them to resort to pre¬ 
posterous theories of imposture, in order to 
account for the religious phenomena which are 
natural products of that evolution. 

For the most part, the Romanist and Protestant 
adversaries of the free-thinkers met them with 
arguments no better than their own; and with 
vituperation, so far inferior that it lacked the wit. 
But one great Christian Apologist fairly captured 
the guns of the free-thinking array, and turned 
their batteries upon themselves. Speculative 
“ infidelity ” of the eighteenth century type was 
mortally wounded by the Analogy; while the pro¬ 
gress of the historical and psychological sciences 
brought to light the important part played by the 
mythopoeic faculty; and, by demonstrating the 
extreme readiness of men to impose upon them¬ 
selves, rendered the calling in of sacerdotal 
cooperation, in most cases, a superfluity. 

Again, as in the fourteenth and the sixteenth 
centuries, social and political influences came into 
play. The free-thinking philosophes, who objected 
to Rousseau’s sentimental religiosity almost as 
much as they did to L’Infdme, were credited with 
the responsibility for all the evil deeds of 
Rousseaus Jacobin disciples, with about as much 


20 


PROLOGUE 


1 


justification as Wicliff was held responsible for the 
Peasants’ revolt, or Luther for the B alter n-krieg. 
In England, though our ancien regime was not 
altogether lovely, the social edifice was never in 
such a bad way as in France; it was still capable 
of being repaired; and our forefathers, very wisely, 
preferred to wait until that operation could be 
safely performed, rather than pull it all down 
about their ears, in order to build a philosophically 
planned house on brand-new speculative founda¬ 
tions. Under these circumstances, it is not 
wonderful that, in this country, practical men 
preferred the gospel of Wesley and Whitfield to 
that of Jean Jacques; while enough of the old 
leaven of Puritanism remained to ensure the 
favour and support of a large number of religious 
men to a revival of evangelical supernaturalism. 
Thus, by degrees, the free-thinking, or the indif¬ 
ference, prevalent among us in the first half of the 
eighteenth century, was replaced by a strong 
supernaturalistic reaction, which submerged the 
work of the free-thinkers; and even seemed, for 
a time, to have arrested the naturalistic movement 
of which that work was an imperfect indication. 
Yet, like Lollardry, four centuries earlier, free- 
thought merely took to running underground, 
safe, sooner or later, to return to the surface. 

My memory,unfortunately, carries me back to the 
fourth decade of the nineteenth century, when the 


I 


PROLOGUE 


21 


evangelical flood had a little abated and the tops 
of certain mountains were soon to appear, chiefly 
in the neighbourhood of Oxford; but when never¬ 
theless, bibliolatry was rampant; when church 
and chapel alike proclaimed, as the oracles of God, 
the crude assumptions of the worst informed and, 
in natural sequence, the most presumptuously 
bigoted, of all theological schools. 

In accordance with promises made on my 
behalf, but certainly without my authorisation, I 
was very early taken to hear “sermons in the 
vulgar tongue.” And vulgar enough often was 
the tongue in which some preacher, ignorant alike 
of literature, of history, of science, and even of 
theology, outside that patronised by his own 
narrow school, poured forth, from the safe 
entrenchment of the pulpit, invectives against 
those who deviated from his notion of orthodoxy. 
From dark allusions to “ sceptics ” and “ infidels,” 
I became aware of the existence of people who 
trusted in carnal reason; who audaciously doubted 
that the world was made in six natural days, or 
that the deluge was universal; perhaps even went 
so far as to question the literal accuracy of the 
story of Eve’s temptation, or of Balaam’s ass; and, 
from the horror of the tones in which they were 
mentioned, I should have been justified in drawing 
the conclusion that these rash men belonged to the 
criminal classes. At the same time, those who 
were more directly responsible for providing me 


22 


PROLOGUE 


I 


with the knowledge essential to the right 
guidance of life (and who sincerely desired to do 
so), imagined they were discharging that most 
sacred duty by impressing upon my childish mind 
the necessity, on pain of reprobation in this world 
and damnation in the next, of accepting, in the 
strict and literal sense, every statement contained 
in the Protestant Bible. I was told to believe, 
and I did believe, that doubt about any of them 
was a sin, not less reprehensible than a moral 
delict. I suppose that, out of a thousand of my 
contemporaries, nine hundred, at least, had their 
minds systematically warped and poisoned, in the 
name of the God of truth, by like discipline. I am 
sure that, even a score of years later, those who 
ventured to question the exact historical accuracy 
of any part of the Old Testament and a fortiori of 
the Gospels, had to expect a pitiless shower of 
verbal missiles, to say nothing of the other dis¬ 
agreeable consequences which visit those who, in 
any way, run counter to that chaos of prejudices 
called public opinion. 

My recollections of this time have recently been 
revived by the perusal of a remarkable document , 1 
signed by as many as thirty-eight out of the 
twenty odd thousand clergymen of the Established 
Church. It does not appear that the signataries 
are officially accredited spokesmen of the ecclesias- 

1 Declaration on the Truth of Holy Scripture . The Times. 
18tli December, 1891. 


r 


PROLOGUE 


23 


tical corporation to which they belong; but I feel 
bound to take their word for it, that they are 
“ stewards of the Lord, who have received the Holy 
Ghost,” and, therefore, to accept this memorial as 
evidence that, though the Evangelicism of my early 
days may be deposed from its place of power, 
though so many of the colleagues of the thirty-eight 
even repudiate the title of Protestants, yet the 
green bay tree of bibliolatry flourishes as it did sixty 
years ago. And, as in those good old times, whoso 
refuses to offer incense to the idol is held to be guilty 
of “ a dishonour to God,” imperilling his salvation. 

It is to the credit of the perspicacity of the 
memorialists that they discern the real nature of 
the Controverted Question of the age. They are 
awake to the unquestionable fact that, if Scripture 
has been discovered “ not to be worthy of un¬ 
questioning belief,” faith “in the supernatural 
itself” is, so far, undermined. And I may con¬ 
gratulate myself upon such weighty confirmation 
of an opinion in which I have had the fortune to 
anticipate them. But whether it is more to the 
credit of the courage, than to the intelligence, of 
the thirty-eight that they should go on to pro¬ 
claim that the canonical scriptures of the Old 
and New Testaments “ declare incontrovertibly 
the actual historical truth in all records, both of 
past events and of the delivery of predictions to 
be thereafter fulfilled,” must be left to the coming 
generation to decide. 


24 


PROLOGUE 


I 


The interest which attaches to this singular 
document will, I think, be based by most thinking 
men, not upon what it is, but upon that of which 
it is a sign. It is an open secret, that the 
memorial is put forth as a counterblast to a 
manifestation of opinion of a contrary character, 
on the part of certain members of the same 
ecclesiastical body, who therefore have, as I 
suppose, an equal right to declare themselves 
“stewards of the Lord and recipients of the Holy 
Ghost.” In fact, the stream of tendency towards 
Naturalism, the course of which I have briefly 
traced, has, of late years, flowed so strongly, that 
even the Churches have begun, I dare not say to 
drift, but, at any rate, to swing at their moorings. 
Within the pale of the Anglican establishment, I 
venture to doubt, whether, at this moment, there 
are as many thorough-going defenders of “ plenary 
inspiration ” as there were timid questioners of 
that doctrine, half a century ago. Commentaries, 
sanctioned by the highest authority, give up the 
“ actual historical truth ” of the cosmogonical 
and diluvial narratives. University professors of 
deservedly high repute accept the critical decision 
that the Hexateuch is a compilation, in which the 
share of Moses, either as author or as editor, is 
not quite so clearly demonstrable as it might be ; 
highly placed Divines tell us that the pre- 
Abrahamic Scripture narratives may be ignored; 
that the book of Daniel may be regarded as a 


I 


PROLOGUE 


25 


patriotic romance of the second century B.c.; 
that the words of the writer of the fourth Gospel 
are not always to be distinguished from those 
which he puts into the mouth of Jesus. Conser¬ 
vative, but conscientious, revisers decide that 
whole passages, some of dogmatic and some of 
ethical importance, are interpolations. An uneasy 
sense of the weakness of the dogma of Biblical 
infallibility seems to be at the bottom of a 
prevailing tendency once more to substitute the 
authority of the “ Church ” for that of the Bible. 
In my old age, it has happened to me to be taken 
to task for regarding Christianity as a “ religion 
of a book ” as gravely as, in my youth, I should 
have been reprehended for doubting that proposi¬ 
tion. It is a no less interesting symptom that 
the State Church seems more and more anxious 
to repudiate all complicity with the principles of 
the Protestant Reformation and to call itself 
“ Anglo-Catholic.” Inspiration, deprived of its 
old intelligible sense, is watered down into a 
mystification. The Scriptures are, indeed, in¬ 
spired ; but they contain a wholly undefined and 
indefinable “ human element ” ; and this unfortu¬ 
nate intruder is converted into a sort of biblical 
whipping boy. Whatsoever scientific investigation, 
historical or physical, proves to be erroneous, the 
“human element” bears the blame; while the 
divine inspiration of such statements, as by their 
nature are out of reach of proof or disproof, is 


26 


PROLOGUE 


I 


still asserted with all the vigour inspired by 
conscious safety from attack. Though the pro¬ 
posal to treat the Bible “ like any other book ” 
which caused so much scandal, forty years ago, 
may not yet be generally accepted, and though 
Bishop Colenso’s criticisms may still lie, formally, 
under ecclesiastical ban, yet the Church has not 
wholly turned a deaf ear to the voice of the 
scientific tempter; and many a coy divine, while 
“ crying I will ne’er consent,” has consented to 
the proposals of that scientific criticism which the 
memorialists renounce and denounce. 

A humble layman, to whom it would seem the 
height of presumption to assume even the uncon¬ 
sidered dignity of a “ steward of science,” may 
well find this conflict of apparently equal ecclesi¬ 
astical authorities perplexing— suggestive, indeed, 
of the wisdom of postponing attention to either, 
until the question of precedence between them is 
settled. And this course will probably appear 
the more advisable, the more closely the funda¬ 
mental position of the memorialists is examined. 

“No opinion of the fact or form of Divine 
Revelation, founded on literary criticism [and I 
suppose I may add historical, or physical, critic¬ 
ism] of the Scriptures themselves, can be admitted 
to interfere with the traditionary testimony of the 
Church, when that has" been once ascertained and 
verified by appeal to antiquity.” 1 
1 Declaration, Article 10. 


r 


PROLOGUE 


27 


Grant that it is “the traditionary testimony of 
the Church” which guarantees the canonicity of 
each and all of the books of the Old and New 
Testaments. Grant also that canonicity means 
infallibility; yet, according to the thirty-eight, 
this “ traditionary testimony ” has to be “ ascer¬ 
tained and verified by appeal to antiquity.” But 
“ ascertainment and verification ” are purely 
intellectual processes, which must he conducted 
according to the strict rules of scientific investiga¬ 
tion, or be self-convicted of worthlessness. More¬ 
over, before we can set about the appeal to 
“ antiquity,” the exact sense of that usefully 
vague term must be defined by similar means. 

“ Antiquity ” may include any number of centu¬ 
ries, great or small; and whether “antiquity” is 
to comprise the Council of Trent, or to stop a 
little beyond that of Nicsea, or to come to an 
end in the time of Irenaeus, or in that *o£ 
Justin Martyr, are knotty questions which can be 
decided, if at all, only by those critical method^ 
which the signataries treat so cavalierly. And 
yet the decision of these questions is funda¬ 
mental, for as the limits of the canonical scrip¬ 
tures vary, so may the dogmas deduced from 
them require modification. Christianity bne . * 
thing, if the fourth Gospel, the Epistle to the * 
Hebrews, the pastoral Epistles, a^d the Apo^ 
calypse are canonical and (by the hypothesis) in¬ 
fallibly true; and another thing, if they are not. 

4 u 


28 


PROLOGUE 


1 


As I have already said, whoso defines the canon 
defines the creed. 

Now it is quite certain with respect to some of 
these books, such as the Apocalypse and the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, that the Eastern and the 
Western Church differed in opinion for centuries ; 
and yet neither the one branch nor the other can 
have considered its judgment infallible, since they 
eventually agreed to a transaction by which each 
gave up its objection to the book patronised by 
the other. Moreover, the “ fathers ” argue (in a 
more or less rational manner) about the canonicity 
of this or that book, and are by no means above 
producing evidence, internal and external, in 
favour of the opinions they advocate. In fact, 
imperfect as their conceptions of scientific method 
may be, they not unfrequently used it to the best 
of their ability. Thus it would appear that 
though science, like Nature, may be driven out 
with a fork, ecclesiastical or other, yet she surely 
comes back again. The appeal to “ antiquity ” is, 
in fact, an appeal to science, first to define what 
antiquity is; secondly, to determine what “ anti¬ 
quity,” so defined, says about canonicity; thirdly, 
to prove that canonicity means infallibility. And 
when science, largely in the shape of the abhorred 
“ criticism,” has answered this appeal, and has 
shown that “ antiquity ” used her own methods, 
however clumsily and imperfectly, she naturally 
turns round upon the appellants, and demands 


I 


PROLOGUE 


29 


that they should show cause why, in these 
days, science should not resume the work the 
ancients did so imperfectly, and carry it out 
efficiently. 

But no such cause can he shown. If “ antiquity ” 
permitted Eusebius, Origen, Tertullian, Irenseus, 
to argue for the reception of this book into the 
canon and the rejection of that, upon rational 
grounds, “ antiquity ” admitted the whole prin¬ 
ciple of modern criticism. If Irenseus produces 
ridiculous reasons for limiting the Gospels to four, 
it was open to any one else to produce good 
reasons (if he had them) for cutting them down 
to three, or increasing them to five. If the 
Eastern branch of the Church had a right to 
reject the Apocalypse and accept the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, and the Western an equal right to 
accept the Apocalypse and reject the Epistle , 4 
down to the fourth century, any other branch 
would have an equal right, on cause shown, to 
reject both, or, as the Catholic Church afterwards 
actually did, to accept both. 

Thus I cannot but think that the thirty-eight 
are hoist with their own petard. Their “ appeal to 
antiquity ” turns out to be nothing but a round¬ 
about way of appealing to the tribunal, the juris¬ 
diction of which they affect to deny. Having 
rested the world of Christian supernaturalism on 
the elephant of biblical infallibility, and furnished 
the elephant with standing ground on the tortoise 


so 


PROLOGUE 


I 


of “ antiquity, ’ they, like their famous Hindoo 
analogue, have been content to look no further * 
and have thereby been spared the horror of dis¬ 
covering that the tortoise rests on a grievously 
fragile construction, to a great extent the work of 
that very intellectual operation which they anathe¬ 
matise and repudiate. 

Moreover, there is another point to be considered. 
It is of course true that a Christian Church 
(whether the Christian Church, or not, depends on 
the connotation of the definite article) existed 
before the Christian scriptures; and that the in¬ 
fallibility of these depends upon the infalli¬ 
bility of the judgment of the persons who 
selected the books of which they are composed, 
out of the mass of literature current among the 
early Christians. The logical acumen of Augustine 
showed him that the authority of the Gospel he 
preached must rest on that of the Church to 
which he belonged . 1 But it is no less true that 
the Hebrew and the Septuagint versions of most, 
if not all, of the Old Testament books existed be¬ 
fore the birth of Jesus of Nazareth ; and that their 
divine authority is presupposed by, and therefore 
can hardly depend upon, the religious body con¬ 
stituted by his disciples. As everybody knows, 
the very conception of a “Christ” is purely 

1 Ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi ecclesiae Catholics 
me commoveret auctoritas .—Contra Epistolam Manichcei, 

cap. v. 


I 


PROLOGUE 


31 


Jewish. The validity of the argument from the 
Messianic prophecies vanishes unless their infallible 
authority is granted; and, as a matter of fact, 
whether we turn to the Gospels, the Epistles, or 
the writings of the early Apologists, the Jewish 
scriptures are recognised as the highest court of 
appeal of the Christian. 

The proposal to cite Christian “ antiquity ” as a 
witness to the infallibility of the Old Testament, 
when its own claims to authority vanish, if certain 
propositions contained in the Old Testament are 
erroneous, hardly satisfies the requirements of lay 
logic. It is as if a claimant to be sole legatee, 
under another kind of testament, should offer his 
assertion as sufficient evidence of the validity of 
the will. And, even were not such a circular, or 
rather rotatory, argument, that the infallibility of 
the Bible is testified by the infallible Church, 
whose infallibility is testified by the infallible 
Bible, too absurd for serious consideration, it re¬ 
mains permissible to ask, Where and when the 
Church, during the period of its infallibility, as 
limited by Anglican dogmatic necessities, has 
officially decreed the “ actual historical truth of 
all records ” in the Old Testament ? Was Augus¬ 
tine heretical when he denied the actual historical 
truth of the record of the Creation ? Father 
Suarez, standing on later Homan tradition, may 
have a right to declare that he was; but it does 
not lie in the mouth of those who limit their 
118 


32 


PROLOGUE 


I 


appeal to that early “ antiquity,” in which Augus¬ 
tine played so great a part, to say so. 

Among the watchers of the course of the world 
of thought, some view with delight and some with 
horror, the recrudescence of Supernaturalism 
which manifests itself among us, in shapes ranged 
along the whole flight of steps, which, in this case, 
separates the sublime from the ridiculous—from 
Neo-Catholicism and Inner-light mysticism, at the 
top, to unclean things, not worthy of mention in 
the same breath, at the bottom. In my poor 
opinion, the importance of these manifestations 
is often greatly over-estimated. The extant forms 
of Supernaturalism have deep roots in human 
nature, and will undoubtedly die hard; but, in 
these latter days, they have to cope with an 
enemy whose full strength is only just beginning 
to he put out, and whose forces, gathering strength 
year by year, are hemming them round on every 
side. This enemy is Science, in the acceptation of 
systematised natural knowledge, which, during the 
last two centuries, has extended those methods of 
investigation, the worth of which is confirmed by 
daily appeal to Nature, to every region in which 
the Supernatural has hitherto been recognised. 

When scientific historical criticism reduced the 
annals of heroic Greece and of regal Rome to the 
level of fables ; when the unity of authorship of the 
Iliad was successfully assailed by scientific literary 


I 


PROLOGUE 


33 


criticism ; when scientific physical criticism, after 
exploding the geocentric theory of the universe 
and reducing the solar system itself to one of 
millions of groups of like cosmic specks, circling, at 
unimaginable distances from one another through 
infinite space, showed the supernaturalistic theories 
of the duration of the earth and of life upon it, to 
be as inadequate as those of its relative dimensions 
and importance had been; it needed no prophetic 
gift to see that* sooner or later, the Jewish and 
the early Christian records would be treated in 
the same manner; that the authorship of the 
Hexateuch and of the Gospels would be as severely 
tested; and that the evidence in favour of the 
veracity of many of the statements found in the 
Scriptures would have to be strong indeed, if they 
were to be opposed to the conclusions of physical 
science. In point of fact, so far as I can discover, 
no one competent to judge of the evidential 
strength of these conclusions, ventures now to say 
that the biblical accounts of the creation and of 
the deluge are true in the natural sense of the 
words of the narratives. The most modern Re¬ 
concilers venture upon is to affirm, that some 
quite different sense may be put upon the words; 
and that this non-natural sense may, with a little 
trouble, be manipulated into some sort of non¬ 
contradiction of scientific truth. 

My purpose, in the essay (XVI.) which treats 
of the narrative of the Deluge, was to prove, by 


34 


PROLOGUE 


I 


physical criticism, that no such event as that 
described ever took place; to exhibit the untrust¬ 
worthy character of the narrative demonstrated 
by literary criticism ; and, finally, to account for 
its origin, by producing a form of those ancient 
legends of pagan Chaldaea, from which the biblical 
compilation is manifestly derived. I have yet to 
learn that the main propositions of this essay can 
be seriously challenged. 

In the essays (II., III.) on the narrative of the 
Creation, I have endeavoured to controvert the 
assertion that modem science supports, either the 
interpretation put upon it by Mr. Gladstone, or 
any interpretation which is compatible with the 
general sense of the narrative, quite apart from 
particular details. The first chapter of Genesis 
teaches the supernatural creation of the present 
forms of life; modem science teaches that they 
have come about by evolution. The first chapter 
of Genesis teaches the successive origin—firstly, 
of all the plants, secondly, of all the aquatic and 
aerial animals, thirdly, of all the terrestrial ani¬ 
mals, which now exist—during distinct intervals 
of time; modem science teaches that, throughout 
all the duration of an immensely long past, so far 
as we have any adequate knowledge of it (that is 
as far back as the Silurian epoch), plants, aquatic, 
aerial, and terrestrial animals have co-existed; 
that the earliest known are unlike those which at 
present exist; and that the modem species have 


I 


PROLOGUE 


35 


come into existence as the last terms of a series, 
the members of which have appeared one after 
another. Thus, far from confirming the account 
in Genesis, the results of modern science, so far as 
they go, are in principle, as in detail, hopelessly 
discordant with it. 

Yet, if the pretensions to infallibility set up, 
not by the ancient Hebrew writings themselves, 
but by the ecclesiastical champions and friends 
from whom they may well pray to be delivered, 
thus shatter themselves against the rock of 
natural knowledge, in respect of the two most 
important of all events, the origin of things and 
the palingenesis of terrestrial life, what historical 
credit dare any serious thinker attach to the 
narratives of the fabrication of Eve, of the Fall, 
of the commerce between the Bene Elohim and 
the daughters of men, which lie between the 
creational and the diluvial legends ? And, if 
these are to lose all historical worth, what be¬ 
comes of the infallibility of those who, according 
to the later scriptures, have accepted them, 
argued from them, and staked far-reaching dog¬ 
matic conclusions upon their historical accuracy ? 

It is the merest ostrich policy for contemporary 
ecclesiasticism to try to hide its Hexateuchal 
head—in the hope that the inseparable connec¬ 
tion of its body with pre-Abrahamic legends may 
be overlooked. The question will still be asked, 
if the first nine chapters of the Pentateuch are 


36 


PROLOGUE 


I 


unhistorical, how is the historical accuracy of 
the remainder to be guaranteed ? What more 
intrinsic claim has the story of the Exodus than 
that of the Deluge, to belief? If God did not 
walk in the Garden of Eden, how can we be 
assured that he spoke from Sinai ? 

In some other of the following essays (IX., X., 
XI., XII., XIV., XV.) I have endeavoured to 
show that sober and well-founded physical and 
literary criticism plays no less havoc with the 
doctrine that the canonical scriptures of the New 
Testament “ declare incontrovertibly the actual 
historical truth in all records.” We are told that 
the Gospels contain a .true revelation of the 
spiritual world—a proposition which, in one sense 
of the word “spiritual,” I should not think it 
necessary to dispute. But, when it is taken to 
signify that everything we are told about the 
world of spirits in these books is infallibly true; 
that we are bound to accept the demonology 
which constitutes an inseparable part of their 
teaching; and to profess belief in a Supernatural¬ 
ism as gross as that of any primitive people—it is 
at any rate permissible to ask why ? Science 
may be unable to define the limits of possibility, 
but it cannot escape from the moral obligation 
to weigh the evidence in favour of any alleged 
wonderful occurrence; and I have endeavoured to 
show that the evidence for the Gadarene miracle 


I 


PROLOGUE 


37 


is altogether worthless. We have simply three, 
partially discrepant, versions of a story, about the 
primitive form, the origin, and the authority for 
which we know absolutely nothing. But the 
evidence in favour of the Gadarene miracle is as 
good as that for any other. 

# Elsewhere, I have pointed out that it is utterly 
beside the mark to declaim against these conclu¬ 
sions on the ground of their asserted tendency 
to deprive mankind of the consolations of the 
Christian faith, and to destroy the foundations 
of morality; still less to brand them with the 
question-begging vituperative appellation of 
“ infidelity.” The point is not whether they 
are wicked; but, whether, from the point of view 
of scientific method, they are irrefragably true. 
If they are, they will be accepted in time, whether 
they are wicked, or not wicked. Nature, so far as 
we have been able to attain to any insight into 
her ways, recks little about consolation and makes 
for righteousness by very round-about paths. 
And, at any rate, whatever may be possible for 
other people, it is becoming less and less possible 
for the man who puts his faith in scientific 
methods of ascertaining truth, and is accustomed 
to have that faith justified by daily experience, to 
be consciously false to his principle in any matter. 
But the number of such men, driven into the use 
of scientific methods of inquiry and taught to 
trust them, by their education, their daily pro- 


38 


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I 


fessional and business needs, is increasing and will 
continually increase. The phraseology of Super¬ 
naturalism may remain on men’s lips, but in 
practice they are Naturalists. The magistrate 
who listens with devout attention to the precept 
“ Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live ” on 
Sunday, on Monday, dismisses, as intrinsically* 
absurd, a charge of bewitching a cow brought 
against some old woman; the superintendent of 
a lunatic asylum who substituted exorcism for 
rational modes of treatment would have but a 
short tenure of office; even parish clerks doubt 
the utility of prayers for rain, so long as the wind 
is in the east; and an outbreak of pestilence sends 
men, not to the churches, but to the drains. In 
spite of prayers for the success of our arms and 
Te Deums for victory, our real faith is in big 
battalions and keeping our powder dry ; in know¬ 
ledge of the science of warfare ; in energy, 
courage, and discipline. In these, as in all other 
practical affairs, we act on the aphorism “ lab or are 
est orare ” ; we admit that intelligent work is the 
only acceptable worship ; and that, whether there 
be a Supernature or not, our business is with 
Nature. 

It is important to note that the principle of the 
scientific Naturalism of the latter half of the nine¬ 
teenth century, in which the intellectual move¬ 
ment of the Renascence has culminated, and 


I 


PROLOGUE 


39 


which was first clearly formulated by Descartes, 
leads not to the denial of the existence of any 
Supernature ; 1 but simply to the denial of the 
validity of the evidence adduced in favour of this, 
or of that, extant form of Supernaturalism. 

Looking at the matter from the most rigidly 
scientific point of view, the assumption that, 
amidst the myriads of worlds scattered through 
endless space, there can be no intelligence, as 
much greater than man’s as his is greater than 
a blackbeetle’s ; no being endowed with powers of 
influencing the course of nature as much greater 
than his, as his is greater than a snail’s, seems to 
me not merely baseless, but impertinent. Without 
stepping beyond the analogy of that which is 
known, it is easy to people the cosmos with entities, 
in ascending scale' until we reach something prac¬ 
tically indistinguishable from omnipotence, omni¬ 
presence, and omniscience. If our intelligence 
can, in some matters, surely reproduce the past of 
thousands of years ago and anticipate the future, 
thousands of years hence, it is clearly within the 
limits of possibility that some greater intellect, 
even of the same order, may be able to mirror the 
whole past and the whole future; if the universe 

1 I employ the words “Supernature” and “Supernatural” 
in their popular senses. For myself, I am bound to say that 
the term “ Nature ” covers the totality of that which is. The 
world of psychical phenomena appears to me to be as much part 
of “Nature” as the world of physical phenomena ; and I am 
unable to perceive any justification for cutting the Universe 
into two halves, one natural and one supernatural. 


40 


PROLOGUE 


r 


is penetrated by a medium of such a nature that a 
magnetic needle on the earth answers to a 
commotion in the sun, an omnipresent agent is 
also conceivable; if our insignificant knowledge 
gives us some influence over events, practical 
omniscience may confer indefinably greater power. 
Finally, if evidence that a thing may be, were 
equivalent to proof that it is, analogy might justify 
the construction of a naturalistic theology and 
demonology not less wonderful than the current 
supernatural; just as it might justify the peopling 
of Mars, or of Jupiter, with living forms to which 
terrestrial biology offers no parallel. Until human 
life is longer and the duties of the present press 
less heavily, I do not think that wise men will oc¬ 
cupy themselves with Jovian, or Martian, natural 
history ; and they will probably agree to a verdict 
of “ not proven ” in respect of naturalistic theology, 
taking refuge in that agnostic confession, which 
appears to me to be the only position for people 
who object to say that they know what they are 
quite aware they do not know. As to the in¬ 
terests of morality, I am disposed to think that 
if mankind could be got to act up to this last 
principle in every relation of life, a reformation 
would be effected such as the world has not yet seen; 
an approximation to the millennium, such as no 
supernaturalistic religion has ever yet succeeded, 
or seems likely ever to succeed, in effecting. 



I 


PKOLOGUE 


41 


I have hitherto dwelt upon scientific Naturalism 
chiefly in its critical and destructive aspect. 
But the present iucarnation of the spirit of the 
Renascence differs from its predecessor in the 
eighteenth century, in that it builds up, as well 
as pulls down. 

That of which it has laid the foundation, of 
which it is already raising the superstructure, is the 
doctrine of evolution. But so many strange mis¬ 
conceptions are current about this doctrine—it is 
attacked on such false grounds by its enemies, and 
made to cover so much that is disputable by some 
of its friends, that I think it well to define as 
clearly as I can, what I do not and what I do 
understand by the doctrine. 

I have nothing to say to any “ Philosophy of 
Evolution.” Attempts to construct such a phil¬ 
osophy may be as useful, nay, even as admirable, 
as was the attempt of Descartes to get at a theory 
of the universe by the same a 'priori road; but, in 
my judgment, they are as premature. Nor, for 
this purpose, have I to do with any theory of the 
“ Origin of Species,” much as I value that which 
is known as the Darwinian theory. That the 
doctrine of natural selection presupposes evolution 
is quite true; but it is not true that evolution 
necessarily implies natural selection. In fact, 
evolution might conceivably have taken place 
without the development of groups possessing the 
characters of species. 


42 


PROLOGUE 


I 


For me, the doctrine of evolution is no specula¬ 
tion, but a generalisation of certain facts, which 
may be observed by any one who will take the 
necessary trouble. These facts are those which 
are classed by biologists under the heads of 
Embryology and of Palaeontology. Embryology 
proves that every higher form of individual life 
becomes what it is by a process of gradual differ¬ 
entiation from an extremely low form ; palseonto - 
logy proves, in some cases, and renders probable in 
all, that the oldest types of a group are the 
lowest; and that they have been followed by a 
gradual succession of more and more differentiated 
forms. It is simply a fact, that evolution of the 
individual animal and plant is taking place, as a 
natural process, in millions and millions of cases 
every day; it is a fact, that the species which have 
succeeded one another in the past, do, in many 
cases, present just those morphological relations, 
which they must possess, if they had proceeded, 
one from the other, by an analogous process of 
evolution. 

The alternative presented, therefore, is : either 
the forms of one and the same type—say, e.g., that 
of the Horse tribe 1 —arose successively, but inde¬ 
pendently of one another, at intervals, during 
myriads of years; or, the later forms are modified 

1 The general reader will find an admirably clear and concise 
statement of the evidence in this case, in Professor Flower's 
recently published work The Horse: a Study in Natural History, 


I 


PROLOGUE 


43 


descendants of the earlier. And the latter sup¬ 
position is so vastly more probable than the former, 
that rational men will adopt it, unless satisfactory 
evidence to the contrary can be produced. The 
objection sometimes put forward, that no one yet 
professes to have seen one species pass into another, 
comes oddly from those who believe that mankind 
are all descended from Adam. Has any one then yet 
seen the production of negroes from a white stock, 
or vice versd ? Moreover, is it absolutely necessary 
to have watched every step of the progress of a 
planet, to be justified in concluding that it really 
does go round the sun ? If so, astronomy is in a 
bad way. 

I do not, for a moment, presume to suggest that 
some one, far better acquainted than I am with 
astronomy and physics; or that a master of the 
new chemistry, with its extraordinary revelations; 
or that a student of the development of human 
society, of language, and of religions, may, not 
find a sufficient foundation for the doctrine of 
evolution in these several regions. On the contrary, 
I rejoice to see that scientific investigation, in all 
directions, is tending to the same result. And it 
may well be, that it is only my long occupation 
with biological matters that leads me to feel safer 
among them than anywhere else. Be that as it 
may, I take my stand on the facts of embryology 
and of palaeontology; and I hold that our present 
knowledge of these facts is sufficiently thorough 


44 


PROLOGUE 


I 


and extensive to justify the assertion that all 
future philosophical and theological speculations 
will have to accommodate themselves to some such 
common body of established truths as the 
following:— 

1. Plants and animals have existed on our 
planet for many hundred thousand, probably 
millions, of years. During this time, their forms, 
or species, have undergone a succession of changes, 
which eventually gave rise to the species which 
constitute the present living population of the 
earth. There is no evidence, nor any reason to 
suspect, that this secular process of evolution is 
other than a part of the ordinary course of nature; 
there is no more ground for imagining the occur¬ 
rence of supernatural intervention, at any moment 
in the development of species in the past, than 
there is for supposing such intervention to take 
place, at any moment in the development of an 
individual animal or plant, at the present day. 

2. At present, every individual animal or plant 
commences its existence as an organism of 
extremely simple anatomical structure; and it 
acquires all the complexity it ultimately possesses 
by gradual differentiation into parts of various 
structure and function. When a series of specific 
forms of the same type, extending over a long 
period of past time, is examined, the relation 
between the earlier and the later forms is analogous 
to that between earlier and later stages of indi- 


2 


PROLOGUE 


45 


vidual development. Therefore, it is a probable 
conclusion that, if we could follow living beings 
back to their earlier states, we should find them 
to present forms similar to those of the individual 
germ, or, what comes to the same thing, of those 
lowest known organisms which stand upon the 
boundary line between plants and animals. At 
present, our knowledge of the ancient living world 
stops very far short of this point. 

3. It is‘generally agreed, and there is certainly 
no evidence to the contrary, that all plants are 
devoid of consciousness; that they neither feel, 
desire, nor think. It is conceivable that the 
evolution of the primordial living substance should 
have taken place only along the plant line. In 
that case, the result might have been a wealth of 
vegetable life, as great, perhaps as varied, as at 
present, though certainly widely different from the 
present flora, in the evolution of which animals 
have played so great a part. But the living world 
thus constituted would be simply an admirable 
piece of unconscious machinery, the working out of 
which lay potentially in its primitive composition; 
pleasure and pain would have no place in it; it 
would be a veritable Garden of Eden without any 
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The 
question of the moral government of such a world 
could no more be asked, than we could reasonably 
seek for a moral purpose in a kaleidoscope. 

4. How far down the scale of animal life the 


46 


PROLOGUE 


I 


phenomena of consciousness are manifested, it is 
impossible to say. No one doubts their presence 
in his fellow-men ; and, unless any strict Cartesians 
are left, no one doubts that mammals and birds are 
to be reckoned creatures that have feelings analo¬ 
gous to our smell, taste, sight, hearing, touch, 
pleasure, and pain. For my own part, I should 
be disposed to extend this analogical judgment a 
good deal further. On the other hand, if the 
lowest forms of plants are to be denied Conscious¬ 
ness, I do not see on what ground it is to be 
ascribed to the lowest animals. I find it hard to 
believe that an infusory animalcule, a foraminifer, 
or a fresh-water polype is capable of feeling; and, 
in spite of Shakspere, I have doubts about the 
great sensitiveness of the "poor beetle that we 
tread upon.” The question is equally perplexing 
when we turn to the stages of development of the 
individual. Granted a fowl feels; that the chick 
just hatched feels; that the chick when it chirps 
within the egg may possibly feel; what is to be 
said of it on the fifth day, when the bird is there, 
but with all its tissues nascent ? Still more, on 
the first day, when it is nothing but a flat cellular 
disk ? I certainly cannot bring myself to believe 
that this disk feels. Yet if it does not, there must 
be some time in the three weeks, between the 
first day and the day of hatching, when, as a con¬ 
comitant, or a consequence, of the attainment by 
the brain of the chick of a certain stage of 


I 


rilOLOGUE 


47 


structural evolution, consciousness makes its ap¬ 
pearance. I have frequently expressed my in¬ 
capacity to understand the nature of the relation 
between consciousness and a certain anatomical 
tissue, which is thus established by observation. 
But the fact remains that, so far as observation and 
experiment go, they teach us that the psychical 
phenomena are dependent on the physical. 

In like manner, if fishes, insects, scorpions, and 
such animals as the pearly nautilus, possess 
feeling, then undoubtedly consciousness was pres¬ 
ent in the world as far back as the Silurian 
epoch. But, if the earliest animals were similar 
to our rhizopods and monads, there must have 
been some time, between the much earlier epoch 
in which they constituted the whole animal 
population and the Silurian, in which feeling 
dawned, in consequence of the organism having 
reached the stage of evolution on which it 
depends. 

5. Consciousness has various forms, which may 
he manifested independently of one another. 
The feelings of light and colour, of sound, of 
touch, though so often associated with those of 
pleasure and pain, are, by nature, as entirely 
independent of them as is thinking. An animal 
devoid of the feelings of pleasure and of pain, 
may nevertheless exhibit all the effects of sensa¬ 
tion and purposive action. Therefore, it would, be 
a justifiable hypothesis that, long after organic 
119 


48 


PROLOGUE 


i 


evolution had attained to consciousness, pleasure 
and pain were still absent. Such a world would 
be without either happiness or misery; no act 
could be punished and none could be rewarded ; 
and it could have no moral purpose. 

6. Suppose, for argument’s sake, that all 
mammals and birds are subjects of pleasure and 
pain. Then we may be certain that these forms 
of consciousness were in existence at the beginning 
of the Mesozoic epoch. From that time forth, 
pleasure has been distributed without reference to 
merit, and pain inflicted without reference to 
demerit, throughout all but a mere fraction of the 
higher animals. Moreover, the amount and the 
severity of the pain, no less than the variety and 
acuteness of the pleasure, have increased with 
every advance in the scale of evolution. As 
suffering came into the world, not in consequence 
of a fall, but of a rise, in the scale of being, so 
every further rise has brought more suffering. 
As the evidence stands, it would appear that the 
sort of brain which characterises the highest 
mammals and which, so far as we know, is the 
indispensable condition of the highest sensibility, 
did not come into existence before the Tertiary 
epoch. The primordial anthropoid was probably, in 
this respect, on much the same footing as his pithe¬ 
coid kin. Like them he stood upon his “ natural 
rights,” gratified all his desires to the best of his 
ability, and was as incapable of either right or 


E 


PROLOGUE 


49 


wrong doing as they. It would be as absurd as m 
their case, to regard his pleasures, any more than 
theirs, as moral rewards, and his pains, any more 
than theirs, as moral punishments. 

7. From the remotest ages of which we have 
any cognizance, death has been the natural and, 
apparently, the necessary concomitant of life. In 
our hypothetical world (3), inhabited by nothing 
but plants, death must have very early resulted 
from the struggle for existence: many of the 
crowd must have jostled one another out of the 
conditions on which life depends. The occurrence 
of death, as far back as we have any fossil record 
of life, however, needs not to be proved by such 
arguments; for, if there had been no death there 
would have been no fossil remains, such as the 
great majority of those we met with. Not only 
was there death in the world, as far as the record 
of life takes us; but, ever since mammals and 
birds have been preyed upon by carnivorous 
animals, there has been painful death, inflicted by 
mechanisms specially adapted for inflicting it. 

8. Those who are acquainted with the closeness 
of the structural relations between the human 
organisation and that of the mammals which 
come nearest to him, on the one hand; and with 
the paleontological history of such animals as 
horses and dogs, on the other; will not be disposed 
to question the origin of man from forms which 
stand in the same sort of relation to Homo 


50 


PROLOGUE 


I 


sapiens, as Lvpparion does to Equus. I tliink it a 
conclusion, fully justified by analogy, that, sooner 
or later, we shall discover the remains of our less 
specialised primatic ancestors in the strata which 
have yielded the less specialised equine and 
canine quadrupeds. At present, fossil remains of 
men do not take us back further than the later 
part of the Quaternary epoch; and, as was to be 
expected, they do not differ more from existing 
men, than Quaternary horses differ from existing 
horses. Still earlier we find traces of man, in 
implements, such as are used by the ruder savages 
at the present day. Later, the remains of the 
palaeolithic and neolithic conditions take us 
gradually from the savage state to the civilisations 
of Egypt and of Mycenae; though the true 
chronological order of the remains actually dis¬ 
covered may be uncertain. 

9. Much has yet to be learned, but, at present, 
natural knowledge affords no support to the notion 
that men have fallen from a higher to a lower 
state. On the contrary, everything points to a 
slow natural evolution; which, favoured by the 
surrounding conditions in such localities as the 
valleys of the Yang-tse-kang, the Euphrates, 
and the Nile, reached a relatively high pitch, five 
or six thousand years ago; while, in many other 
regions, the savage condition has persisted down 
to our day. In all this vast lapse of time there 
is not a trace of the occurrence of any general 


I 


PROLOGUE 


51 


destruction of the human race; not the smallest 
indication that man has been treated on any 
other principles than the rest of the animal 
world. 

10. The results of the process of evolution in 
the case of man, and in that of his more nearly 
allied contemporaries, have been marvellously 
different. Yet it is easy to see that small primi¬ 
tive differences of a certain order, must, in the 
long run, bring about a wide divergence of the 
human stock from the others. It is a reasonable 
supposition that, in the earliest human organisms, 
an improved brain, a voice more capable of 
modulation and articulation, limbs which lent 
themselves better to gesture, a more perfect hand, 
capable among other things of imitating form in 
plastic or other material, were combined with 
the curiosity, the mimetic tendency, the strong 
family affection of the next lower group; and 
that they were accompanied by exceptional length 
of life and a prolonged minority. The last two 
peculiarities are obviously calculated to strengthen 
the family organisation, and to give great weight 
to its educative influences. The potentiality of 
language, as the vocal symbol of thought, lay in 
the faculty of modulating and articulating the 
voice. The potentiality of writing, as the visual 
symbol of thought, lay in the hand that could 
draw; and in the mimetic tendency, which, as we 
know, was gratified by drawing, as far back as the 


52 


PROLOGUE 


I 


days of Quaternary man. With speech as the 
record, in tradition, of the experience of more 
than one generation; with writing as the record 
of that of any number of generations; the 
experience of the race, tested and corrected 
generation after generation, could be stored up 
and made the starting point for fresh progress. 
Having these perfectly natural factors of the 
evolutionary process in man before us, it seems 
unnecessary to go further a-field in search of 
others. 

11. That the doctrine of evolution implies a 
former state of innocence of mankind is quite 
true ; but, as I have remarked, it is the innocence 
of the ape and of the tiger, whose acts, however 
they may run counter to the principles of 
morality, it would be absurd to blame. The lust 
of the one and the ferocity of the other are as 
much provided for in their organisation, are as 
clear evidences of design, as any other features 
that can be named. 

Observation and experiment upon the pheno¬ 
mena of society soon taught men that, in order to 
obtain the advantages of social existence, certain 
rules must be observed. Morality commenced 
with society. Society is possible only upon the 
condition that the members of it shall surrender 
more or less of their individual freedom of action. 
In primitive societies, individual selfishness is a 
centrifugal force of such intensity that it is 


I 


PROLOGUE 


53 


constantly bringing the social organisation to the 
verge of destruction. Hence the prominence of 
the positive rules of obedience to the elders; of 
standing by the family or the tribe in all emergen¬ 
cies; of fulfilling the religious rites, non-observ¬ 
ance of which is conceived to damage it with the 
supernatural powers, belief in whose existence is 
one of the earliest products of human thought; 
and of the negative rules, which restrain each 
from meddling with the life or property of 
another. 

12. The highest conceivable form of human 
society is that in which the desire to do what is 
best for the whole, dominates and limits the 
action of every member of that society. The 
more complex the social organisation the greater 
the number of acts from which each man must 
abstain, if he desires to do that which is best for 
all. Thus the progressive evolution of society 
means increasing restriction of individual freedom 
in certain directions. 

With the advance of civilisation, and the 
growth of cities and of nations by the coalescence 
of families and of tribes, the rules which con¬ 
stitute the common foundation of morality and of 
law became more numerous and complicated, and 
the temptations to break or evade many of them 
stronger. In the absence of a clear apprehen¬ 
sion of the natural sanctions of these rules, a 
supernatural sanction was assumed ; and imagina- 


54 


PROLOGUE 


I 


fcion supplied the motives which reason was 
supposed to be incompetent to furnish. Religion, 
at first independent of morality, gradually took 
morality under its protection; and the super¬ 
naturalists have ever since tried to persuade 
mankind that the existence of ethics is bound up 
with that of supernaturalism. 

I am not of that opinion, But, whether it is 
correct or otherwise, it is very clear to me that, 
as Beelzebub is not to be cast out by the aid of 
Beelzebub, so morality is not to be established 
by immorality. It is, we are told, the special 
peculiarity of the devil that he was a liar from 
the beginning. If we set out in life with pre¬ 
tending to know that which we do not know; with 
professing to accept for proof evidence which we 
are well aware is inadequate; with wilfully 
shutting our eyes and our ears to facts which 
militate against this or that comfortable hypo¬ 
thesis ; we are assuredly doing our best to deserve 
the same character. 

I have not the presumption to imagine that, in 
spite of all my efforts, errors may not have crept 
into these propositions. But I am tolerably 
confident that time will prove them to be 
substantially correct. And if they are so, I 
confess I do not see how any extant supernatural- 
istic system can also claim exactness. That they 
are irreconcilable with the biblical cosmogony, 


I 


PROLOGUE 


55 


anthropology, and theodicy is obvious; but they 
are no less inconsistent with the sentimental 
Deism of the “Vicaire Savoyard” and his 
numerous modern progeny. It is as impossible, 
to my mind, to suppose that the evolutionary 
process was set going with full foreknowledge of 
the result and yet with what we should under¬ 
stand by a purely benevolent intention, as it is 
to imagine that the intention was purely malevo¬ 
lent. And the prevalence of dualistic theories 
from the earliest times to the present day— 
whether in the shape of the doctrine of the 
inherently evil nature of matter ; of an Ahriman ; 
of a hard and cruel Demiurge; of a diabolical 
“ prince of this world,” show how widely this 
difficulty has been felt. 

Many seem to think that, when it is admitted 
that the ancient literature, contained in our 
Bibles, has no more claim to infallibility than any 
other ancient literature; when it is proved that 
the Israelites and their Christian successors 
accepted a great many supernaturalistic theories 
and legends which have no better foundation than 
those of heathenism, nothing remains to be done but 
to throw the Bible aside as so much waste paper. 

I have always opposed this opinion. It appears 
to me that if there is anybody more objectionable 
than the orthodox Bibliolater it is the heterodox 
Philistine, who can discover in a literature which, 
in some respects, has no superior, nothing but 


56 


PROLOGUE 


I 


a subject for scoffing and an occasion for the 
display of his conceited ignorance of the debt he 
owes to former generations. 

Twenty-two years ago I pleaded for the use of 
the Bible as an instrument of popular education, 
and I venture to repeat what I then said : 

“Consider the great historical fact that, for 
three centuries, this book has been woven into 
the life of all that is best and noblest in English 
history; that it has become the national Epic of 
Britain and is as familiar to gentle and simple, 
from John o’ Groat’s House to Land’s End, as 
Dante and Tasso once were to the Italians; that 
it is written in the noblest and purest English 
and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary 
form ; and, finally, that it forbids the veriest hind, 
who never left his village, to be ignorant of the 
existence of other countries and other civilisations 
and of a great past, stretching back to the 
furthest limits of the oldest nations in the world. 
By the study of what other book could children 
be so much humanised and made to feel that each 
figure in that vast historical procession fills, like 
themselves, but a momentary space in the interval 
between the Eternities; and earns the blessings or 
the curses of all time, according to its effort to do 
good and hate evil, even as they also are earning 
their payment for their work ? ” 1 

1 “The School Boards: What they Can do and what they 
May do,” 1870. Critiques and Addresses, p. 51. 



I 


PROLOGUE 


57 


At the same time, I laid stress upon the neces¬ 
sity of placing such instruction in lay hands ; in 
the hope and belief, that it would thus gradually 
accommodate itself to the coming changes of 
opinion; that the theology and the legend would 
drop more and more out of sight, while the peren¬ 
nially interesting historical, literary, and ethical 
contents would come more and more into view. 

I may add yet another claim of the Bible to the 
respect and the attention of a democratic age. 
Throughout the history of the western world, the 
Scriptures, Jewish and Christian, have been the 
great instigators of revolt against the worst forms 
of clerical and political despotism. The Bible has 
been the Magna Charta of the poor and of the 
oppressed; down to modern times, no State has 
had a constitution in which the interests of the 
people are so largely taken into account, in which 
the duties, so much more than the privileges, of 
rulers are insisted upon, as that drawn up for 
Israel in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus; nowhere 
is the fundamental truth that the welfare of the 
State, in the long run, depends on the uprightness 
of the citizen so strongly laid down. Assuredly, 
the Bible talks no trash about the rights of man • 
but it insists on the equality of duties, on the 
liberty to bring about that righteousness which is 
somewhat different from struggling for “ rights ”; 
on the fraternity of taking thought for one’s 
neighbour as for one’s self. 


58 


PROLOGUE 


I 


So far as such equality, liberty, and fraternity 
are included under the democratic principles 
which assume the same names, the Bible is the 
most democratic book in the world. As such it 
began, through the heretical sects, to undermine 
the clerico-political despotism of the middle ages, 
almost as soon as it was formed, in the eleventh 
century; Pope and King had as much as they 
could do to put down the Albigenses and the 
Waldenses in the twelfth and thirteenth cen¬ 
turies ; the Lollards and the Hussites gave them 
still more trouble in the fourteenth and fifteenth ; 
from the sixteenth century onward, the Protestant 
sects have favoured political freedom in proportion 
to the degree in which they have refused to 
acknowledge any ultimate authority save that of 
the Bible. 

But the enormous influence which has thus 
been exerted by the Jewish and Christian Scrip¬ 
tures has had no necessary connection with 
cosmogonies, demonologies, and miraculous inter¬ 
ferences. Their strength lies in their appeals, not 
to the reason, but to the ethical sense. I do not 
say that even the highest biblical ideal is exclusive 
of others or needs no supplement. But I do 
believe that the human race is not yet, possibly 
may never be, in a position to dispense with it. 


II 


SCIENTIFIC AND PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC 
REALISM 

[1887] 

Next to undue precipitation in anticipating the 
results of pending investigations, the intellectual 
sin which is commonest and most hurtful to those 
who devote themselves to the increase of know¬ 
ledge is the omission to profit by the experience 
of their predecessors recorded in the history of 
science and philosophy. It is true that, at the 
present day, there is more excuse than at any 
former time for such neglect. No small labour is 
needed to raise one’s self to the level of the acqui¬ 
sitions already made ; and able men, who have 
achieved thus much, know that, if they devote 
themselves body and soul to the increase of their 
store, and avoid looking back, with as much care 
as if the injunction laid on Lot and his family 
were binding upon them, such devotion is sure to 
be richly repaid by the joys of the discoverer and 


60 


rSEUDO-SCIENTIFIO REALISM 


II 


the solace of fame, if not by rewards of a less 
elevated character. 

So, following the advice of Francis Bacon, we 
refuse inter mortuos qucerere vivum ; we leave the 
past to bury its dead, and ignore our intellectual 
ancestry. Nor are we content with that. We 
follow the evil example set us, not only by Bacon 
but by almost all the men of the Renaissance, in 
pouring scorn upon the work of our immediate 
spiritual forefathers, the schoolmen of the Middle 
Ages. It is accepted as a truth which is indisput¬ 
able, that, for seven or eight centuries, a long 
succession of able men—some of them of trans¬ 
cendent acuteness and encyclopaedic knowledge— 
devoted laborious lives to the grave discussion 
of mere frivolities and the arduous pursuit of 
intellectual will-o’-the-wisps. To say nothing of 
a little modesty, a little impartial pondering over 
personal experience might suggest a doubt as to 
the adequacy of this short and easy method of 
dealing with a large chapter of the history of 
the human mind. Even an acquaintance with 
popular literature which had extended so far as 
to include that part of the contributions of Sam 
Slick which contains his weighty aphorism that 
“there is a great deal of human nature in all 
mankind,” might raise a doubt whether, after all, 
the men of that epoch, who, take them all round, 
were endowed with wisdom and folly in much 
the same proportion as ourselves, were likely to 


II 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


61 


display nothing better than the qualities of 
energetic idiots, when they devoted their faculties 
to the elucidation of problems which were to 
them, and indeed are to us, the most serious 
which life has to offer. Speaking for myself, 
the longer I live the more I am disposed to 
think that there is much less either of pure 
folly, or of pure wickedness, in the world than is 
commonly supposed. It may be doubted if any 
sane man ever said to himself, “ Evil, be thou my 
good,” and I have never yet had the good fortune 
to meet with a perfect fool. When I have brought 
to the inquiry the patience and long-suffering 
which become a scientific investigator, the most 
promising specimens have turned out to have a 
good deal to say for themselves from their own 
point of view. And, sometimes, calm reflection 
has taught the humiliating lesson, that their 
point of view was not so different from my own 
as I had fondly imagined. Comprehension is 
more than half-way to sympathy, here as else¬ 
where. 

If we turn our attention to scholastic philosophy 
in the frame of mind suggested by these prefatory 
remarks, it assumes a very different character from 
that which it bears in general estimation. No 
doubt it is surrounded by a dense thicket of 
thorny logomachies and obscured by the dust- 
clouds of a barbarous and perplexing terminology. 
But suppose that, undeterred by much grime and 


62 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


by many scratches, the explorer has toiled through 
this jungle, he comes to an open country which is 
amazingly like his dear native land. The hills 
which he has to climb, the ravines he has to 
avoid, look very much the same; there is the 
same infinite space above, and the same abyss of 
the unknown below; the means of travelling are 
the same, and the goal is the same. 

That goal for the schoolmen, as for us, is the 
settlement of the question how far the universe is 
the manifestation of a rational order; in other 
words, how far logical deduction from indisput¬ 
able premisses will account for that which has 
happened and does happen. That was the object 
of scholasticism, and, so far as I am aware, the 
object of modern science may be expressed in 
the same terms. In pursuit of this end, modem 
science takes into account all the phenomena of 
the universe which are brought to our knowledge 
by observation or by experiment. It admits that 
there are two worlds to be considered, the one 
physical and the other psychical; and that though 
there is a most intimate relation and interconnec¬ 
tion between the two, the bridge from one to the 
other has yet to be found ; that their phenomena 
run, not in one series, but along two parallel lines. 

To the schoolmen the duality of the universe 
appeared under a different aspect. How this 
came about will not be intelligible unless we 
clearly apprehend the fact that they did really 


II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM G3 

believe in dogmatic Christianity as it was formu¬ 
lated by the Roman Church. They did not give 
a mere dull assent to anything the Church told 
them on Sundays, and ignore her teachings for 
the rest of the week; but they lived and moved 
and had their being in that supersensible theo¬ 
logical world which was created, or rather grew 
up, during the first four centuries of our reckoning, 
and which occupied their thoughts far more than 
the sensible world in which their earthly lot was 
cast. 

For the most part, we learn history from the 
colourless compendiums or partisan briefs of mere 
scholars, who have too little acquaintance with 
practical life, and too little insight into specula¬ 
tive problems, to understand that about which 
they write. Id historical science, as in all 
sciences which have to do with concrete pheno¬ 
mena, laboratory practice is indispensable ; and 
the laboratory practice of historical science is 
afforded, on the one hand, by active social and 
political life, and, on the other, by the study of 
those tendencies and operations of the mind which 
embody themselves in philosophical and theologi¬ 
cal systems. Thucydides and Tacitus, and, to come 
nearer our own time, Hume and Grote, were men 
of affairs, and had acquired, by direct contact with 
social and political history in the making, the 
secret of understanding how such history is made. 
Our notions of the intellectual history of the 
120 


64 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


middle ages are, unfortunately, too often derived 
from writers who have never seriously grappled 
with philosophical and theological problems : and 
hence that strange myth of a millennium of moon¬ 
shine to which I have adverted. 

However, no very profound study of the works 
of contemporary writers who, without devoting 
themselves specially to theology or philosophy, 
were learned and enlightened—such men, for 
example, as Eginhard or Dante—is necessary to 
convince one’s self, that, for them, the world of the 
theologian was an ever-present and awful reality. 
From the centre of that world, the Divine Trinity, 
surrounded by a hierarchy of angels and saints, 
contemplated and governed the insignificant sen¬ 
sible world in which the inferior spirits of men, 
burdened with the debasement of their material 
embodiment and continually solicited to their 
perdition by a no less numerous and almost as 
powerful hierarchy of devils, were constantly 
struggling on the edge of the pit of everlasting 
damnation . 1 

1 There is no exaggeration in this brief and summary view of 
the Catholic cosmos. But it would he unfair to leave it to be 
supposed that the Reformation made any essential alteration, 
except perhaps for the worse, in that cosmology which called 
itself “Christian.” The protagonist of the Reformation, from 
whom the whole of the Evangelical sects are lineally descended, 
states the case with that plainness of speech, not to say bru¬ 
tality, which characterised him. Luther says that man is a 
beast of burden who only moves as his rider orders; sometimes 
God rides him, and sometimes Satan. “Sic voluntas hum an a 
in medio posita est, ceu jumentum; si insedeiit Deus, vult et 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


65 


[[ 


The men of the middle ages believed that 
through the Scriptures, the traditions of the 
Fathers, and the authority of the Church, they 
were in possession of far more, and more trust¬ 
worthy, information with respect to the nature 
and order of things in the theological world than 
they had in regard to the nature and order of 
things in the sensible world. And, if the two 
sources of information came into conflict, so much 
the worse for the sensible world, which, after all, 
was more or less under the dominion of Satan. 
Let us suppose that a telescope powerful enough 
to show us what is going on in the nebula of the 
sword of Orion, should reveal a world in which 
stones fell upwards, parallel lines met, and the 
fourth dimension of space was quite obvious. Men 
of science would have only two alternatives before 
them. Either the terrestrial and the nebular facts 
must be brought into harmony by such feats of 
subtle sophistry as the human mind is always 

vadit, quo vult Deu3. ... Si insederit Satan, vult et vadit, 
quo vult Satan ; nec est in ejus arbitrio ad ntrun. sessorem 
currere, aut eum queer ere, sed i|*si sessores certant ob ipsum 
obtincndum et possidenduin ” (De Servo Arbitrio , M. Lutheri 
Opera, ed. 1546, t. ii. p. 468). One may hear substantially the 
same doctrine preached in the parks and at street-corners by 
zealous volunteer missionaries of Evangelicism, any Sunday, in 
modern London. Why these doctrines, which are conspicuous 
by their absence in the* four Gospels, should arrogate to them¬ 
selves the title of Evangelical, in contradistinction to Catholic, 
Christianity, may well perplex the impartial inquirer, who, if 
he were obliged to choose between the two, might naturally 
prefer that which leaves the poor beast of burden a little freedom 
of choice. 


66 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


capable of performing when driven into a corner ; 
or science must throw down its arms in despair, 
and commit suicide, either by the admission that 
the universe is, after all, irrational, inasmuch as 
that which is truth in one corner of it is absurdity 
in another, or by a declaration of incompetency. 

In the middle ages, the labours of those great 
men who endeavoured to reconcile the system of 
thought which started from the data of pure 
reason, with that which started from the data of 
Roman theology, produced the system of thought 
which is known as scholastic philosophy; the 
alternative of surrender and suicide is exemplified 
by Avicenna and his followers when they declared 
that that which is true in theology may be false 
in philosophy, and vice versd ; and by Sanchez 
in his famous defence of the thesis “ Quod nil 
scitur” 

To those who deny the validity of one of the 
primary assumptions of the disputants—who 
decline, on the ground of the utter insufficiency of 
the evidence, to put faith in the reality of that 
other world, the geography and the inhabitants of 
which are so confidently described in the so-called 1 
Christianity of Catholicism—the long and bitter 
contest, which engaged the best intellects for so 

1 I say “ so-called ” not by way of offence, but as a protest 
against the monstrous assumption that Catholic Christianity is 
explicitly or implicitly contained in any trustworthy record W 
the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. 


II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 67 

many centuries, may seem a terrible illustration 
of the wasteful way in which the struggle for ex¬ 
istence is carried on in the world of thought, no 
less than in that of matter. But there is a more 
cheerful mode of looking at the history of scholas¬ 
ticism. It ground and sharpened the dialectic 
implements of our race as perhaps nothing but 
discussions, in the result of which men thought 
their eternal, no less than their temporal, interests 
were at stake, could have done. When a logical 
blunder may ensure combustion, not only in the 
next world but in this, the construction of syllo¬ 
gisms acquires a peculiar interest. Moreover, the 
schools kept the thinking faculty alive and active, 
when the disturbed state of civil life, the mephitic 
atmosphere engendered by the dominant ecclesi- 
asticism, and the almost total neglect of natural 
knowledge, might well have stifled it. And, 
finally, it should be remembered that scholasticism 
really did thresh out pretty effectually certain 
problems which have presented themselves to 
mankind ever since they began to think, and 
which, I suppose, will present themselves so long 
as they continue to think. Consider, for example, 
the controversy of the Realists and the Nominal¬ 
ists, which was carried on with varying fortunes, 
and under various names, from the time of Scotus 
Erigena to the end of the scholastic period. Has 
it now a merely antiquarian interest ? Has 
Nominalism, in any of its modifications, so com- 


68 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


pletely won the day that Realism may be regarded 
as dead and buried without hope of resurrection ? 
Many people seem to think so, but it appears to 
me that, without taking Catholic philosophy into 
consideration, one has not to look about far to 
find evidence that Realism is still to the fore, and 
indeed extremely lively . 1 

The other day I happened to meet with a 
report of a sermon recently preached in St. Paul’s 
Cathedral. From internal evidence I am inclined 
to think that the report is substantially correct. 
But as I have not the slightest intention of finding 
fault with the eminent theologian and eloquent 
preacher to whom the discourse is attributed, for 
employment of scientific language in a manner for 
which he could find only too many scientific pre¬ 
cedents, the accuracy of the report in detail is 
not to the purpose. I may safely take it as the 
embodiment of views which are thought to be 


1 It may "be desirable to observe that, in modem times, tlie 
term “Realism” has acquired a signification wholly different 
from that which attached to it in the middle ages. We com¬ 
monly use it as the contrary of Idealism. The Idealist holds 
that the phenomenal world has only a subjective existence, the 
Realist that it lias an objective existence. I am not aware that 
any mediaeval philosopher was an Idealist in the sense in which 
we apply the term to Berkeley. In fact, tbe cardinal defect 
of their speculations lies in their oversight of the considera¬ 
tions which lead to Idealism. If many of them regarded the 
material world as a negation, it was an active negation ; not 
zero, but a minus quantity. 


II 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


69 


quite in accordance with science by many excel¬ 
lent, instructed, and intelligent people. 

The preacher further contended that it was yet mure difficult 
to realise that our earthly home would become the scene of a 
vast physical catastrophe. Imagination recoils from the idea 
that the course of natui’e—the phrase helps to disguise the truth 
—so unvarying and regular, the ordered sequence of movement 
and life, should suddenly cease. Imagination looks more reason¬ 
able when it assumes the air of scientific reason. Physical law, 
it says, will prevent the occurrence of catastrophes only antici¬ 
pated by an apostle in an unscientific age. Might not there, 
however, be a suspension of a lower law by the intervention of 
a higher ? Thus every time we lifted our arms we defied the 
laws of gravitation, and in railways and steamboats powerful 
laws were held in check by others. The flood and the destruc¬ 
tion of Sodom and Gomorrah were brought about by the opera¬ 
tions of existing laws, and may it not be that in His illimitable 
universe there are more important laws than those which sur¬ 
round our puny life—moral and not merely physical forces ? 
Is it inconceivable that the day will come when these royal and 
ultimate laws shall wreck the natural order of things which 
seems so stable and so fair? Earthquakes were not things of 
remote antiquity, as an island off Italy, the Eastern Archipelago, 
Greece, and Chicago bore witness. ... In presence of a great 
earthquake men feel how powerless they are, and their very 
knowledge adds to their weakness. The end of human proba¬ 
tion, the final dissolution of organised society, and the destruc¬ 
tion of man’s home on the surface of the globe, were none of 
them violently contrary to our present experience, but only the 
extension of present facts. The presentiment of death was com¬ 
mon ; there were felt to be many things which threatened the 
existence of society ; and as our globe was a ball of fire, at any 
moment the pent-up forces which surge and boil beneath our 
feet might be poured out (“Pall Mall Gazette,” December 6, 
1886 ). 

The preacher appears to entertain the notion 


70 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


that the occurrence of a “ catastrophe ” 1 involves 
a breach of the present order of nature—that it is 
an event incompatible with the physical laws 
which at present obtain. He seems to be of 
opinion that “ scientific reason ” lends its authority 
to the imaginative supposition that physical law 
will prevent the occurrence of the “ catastrophes ” 
anticipated by an unscientific apostle. 

Scientific reason, like Homer, sometimes nods; 
but I am not aware that it has ever dreamed 
dreams of this sort. The fundamental axiom of 
scientific thought is that there is not, never has 
been, and never will be, any disorder in nature. 
The admission of the occurrence of any event 
which was not the logical ^consequence of the 
immediately antecedent events, according to these 
definite, ascertained, or unascertained rules which 
we call the “ laws of nature,” would be an act of 
self-destruction on the part of science. 

“ Catastrophe ” is a relative conception. For 
ourselves it means an event which brings about 
very terrible consequences to man, or impresses 
his mind by its magnitude relatively to him. But 
events which are quite in the natural order of 
things to us, may be frightful catastrophes to other 
sentient beings. Surely no interruption of the 

1 At any rate a catastrophe greater than the flood, which, as 
I observe with interest, is as calmly assumed by the preacher to 
be an historical event as if science had never had a word to say 
on that subject 1 


II 


PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC REALISM 


71 


order of nature is involved if, in the course of 
descending through an Alpine pine-wood, I jump 
upon an anthill and in a moment wreck a whole 
city and destroy a hundred thousand of its inhabi¬ 
tants. To the ants the catastrophe is worse than 
the earthquake of Lisbon. To me it is the natural 
and necessary consequence of the laws of matter 
in motion. A redistribution of energy has taken 
place, which is perfectly in accordance with 
natural order, however unpleasant its effects may 
be to the ants. 

Imagination, inspired by scientific reason, 
and not merely assuming the airs thereof, as it 
unfortunately too often does in the pulpit, so far 
from having any right to repudiate catastrophes 
and deny the possibility of the cessation of motion 
and- life, easily finds justification for the exactly 
contrary course. Kant in his famous “ Theory of the 
Heavens ” declares the end of the world and its 
reduction to a formless condition to be a necessary 
consequence of the causes to which it owes its 
origin and continuance. And, as to catastro¬ 
phes of prodigious magnitude and frequent occur¬ 
rence, they were the favourite asylum ignorantice 
of geologists, not a quarter of a century ago. If 
modern geology is becoming more and more 
disinclined to call in catastrophes to its aid, it is 
not because of any a priori difficulty in reconciling 
the occurrence of such events with the universality 
of order, but because the a posteriori evidence of 


72 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


the occurrence of events of this character in past 
times has more or less completely broken down. 

It is, to say the least, highly probable that this 
earth is a mass of extremely hot matter, invested 
by a cooled crust, through which the hot interior 
still continues to cool, though with extreme slow¬ 
ness. It is no less probable that the faults and 
dislocations, the foldings and fractures, everywhere 
visible in the stratified crust, its large and slow 
movements through miles of elevation and depres¬ 
sion, and its small and rapid movements which 
give rise to the innumerable perceived and 
unperceived earthquakes which are constantly 
occurring, are due to the shrinkage of the crust 
on its cooling and contracting nucleus. 

Without going beyond the range of fair scienti¬ 
fic analogy, conditions are easily conceivable which 
should render the loss of heat far more rapid than 
it is at present; and such an occurrence would be 
just as much in accordance with ascertained laws 
of nature, as the more rapid cooling of a red-hot 
bar, when it is thrust into cold water, than when 
it remains in the air. But much more rapid 
cooling might entail a shifting and re-arrangement 
of the parts of the crust of the earth on a scale of 
unprecedented magnitude, and bring about “ catas¬ 
trophes” to which the earthquake of Lisbon is 
but a trifle. It is conceivable that man and his 
works and all the higher forms of animal life 
should be utterly destroyed; that mountain 


II 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


73 


regions should be converted into ocean depths 
and the floor of oceans raised into mountains; 
and the earth become a scene of horror which 
even the lurid fancy of the writer of the 
Apocalypse would fail to portray. And yet, to 
the eye of science, there would be no more disorder 
here than in che sabbatical peace of a summer 
sea. Not a link in the chain of natural causes and 
effects would be broken, nowhere would there be 
the slightest indication of the “suspension of a 
lower law by a higher.” If a sober scientific 
thinker is inclined to put little faith in the wild 
vaticinations of universal ruin which, in a less 
saintly person than the seer of Patmos, might seem 
to be dictated by the fury of a revengeful fanatic, 
rather than by the spirit of the teacher who bid 
men love their enemies, it is not on the ground 
that they contradict scientific principles; but 
because the evidence of their scientific value does 
not fulfil the conditions on which weight is at¬ 
tached to evidence. The imagination which 
supposes that it does, simply does not “ assume 
the air of scientific reason.” 

I repeat that, if imagination is used within the 
limits laid down by science, disorder is unimagin¬ 
able. If a being endowed with perfect intellectual 
and aesthetic faculties, but devoid of the capacity 
for suffering pain, either physical or moral, were 
to devote his utmost powers to the investigation 
t>f nature, the universe would seem to him to be a 


74 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


sort of kaleidoscope, in which, at every successive 
moment of time, a new arrangement of parts of 
exquisite beauty and symmetry would present 
itself; and each of them would show itself to be 
the logical consequence of the preceding arrange¬ 
ment, under the conditions which we call the laws 
of nature. Such a spectator might well be filled 
with that Amor intellectualis Dei , the beatific 
vision of the vita contemplativa, which some of the 
greatest thinkers of all ages, Aristotle, Aquinas, 
Spinoza, have regarded as the only conceivable 
eternal felicity; and the vision of illimitable 


suffering, as if sensitive beings were unregarded 
animalcules which had got between the bits of 
glass of the kaleidoscope, which mars the prospect 
to us poor mortals, in no wise alters the fact that 
order is lord of all, and disorder only a name for 
that part of the order which gives us pain. 

The other fallacious employment of the names 


of scientific conceptions which pervades the preach¬ 


er’s utterance, brings me back to the proper topic 
of the present essay. It is the use of the word 
“ law ” as if it denoted a thing—as if a “ law of 
nature,” as science understands it, were a being 
endowed with certain powers, in virtue of which 
the phenomena expressed by that law are brought 
about. The preacher asks, “ Might not there be 
a suspension of a lower law by the intervention of 
a higher ? ” He tells us that every time we lift 
our arms we defy the law of gravitation. He asks 


II 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


75 


whether some day certain "royal and ultimate 
laws ” may not come and “ wreck ” those laws 
which are at present, it would appear, acting as 
nature’s police. It is evident, from these expres¬ 
sions, that “ laws,” in the mind of the preacher, 
are entities having an objective existence in a 
graduated hierarchy. And it would appear that 
the “ royal laws ” are by no means to be regarded 
as constitutional royalties : at any moment, they 
may, like Eastern despots, descend in wrath 
among the middle-class and plebeian laws, which 
have hitherto done the drudgery of the world’s 
work, and, to use phraseology not unknown in our 
seats of learning—“ make hay ” of their belong¬ 
ings. Or perhaps a still more familiar analogy 
has suggested this singular theory; and it is 
thought that high laws may " suspend ” low laws, 
as a bishop may suspend a curate. 

Far be it from me to controvert these views, if 
any one likes to hold them. All I wish to remark 
is that such a conception of the nature of “ laws ” 
has nothing to do with modern science. It is 
scholastic realism—realism as intense and unmiti¬ 
gated as that of Scotus Erigena a thousand years 
ago. The essence of such realism is that it 
maintains the objective existence of universals, 
or, as we call them nowadays, general propositions. 
It affirms, for example, that " man ” is a real 
thing, apart from individual men, having its exist¬ 
ence, not in the sensible, but in the intelligible 


76 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


world, and clothing itself with the accidents of 
sense to make the Jack and Tom and Harry 
whom we know. Strange as such a notion may 
appear to modern scientific thought, it really 
pervades ordinary language. There are few 
people who would, at once, hesitate to admit that 
colour, for example, exists apart from the mind 
which conceives the idea of colour. They hold it 
to be something which resides in the coloured 
object; and so far they are as much Realists as if 
they had sat at Plato’s feet. Reflection on the 
facts of the case must, I imagine, convince every 
one that “ colour ” is—not a mere name, which 
was the extreme Nominalist position—but a name 
for that group of states of feeling which we call 
blue, red, yellow, and so on, and which we beiieve 
to be caused by luminiferous vibrations which 
have not the slightest resemblance to colour; 
while these again are set afoot by states of the 
body to which we ascribe colour, but which are 
equally devoid of likeness to colour. 

In the same way, a law of nature, in the scienti¬ 
fic sense, is the product of a mental operation 
upon the facts of nature which come under our 
observation, and has no more existence outside 
the mind than colour has. The law of gravitation 
is a statement of the manner in which experience 
shows that bodies, which are free to move, do, in 
fact, move towards one another. But the other 
facts of observation, that bodies are not always 


II 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC KEALISM 


77 


moving in this fashion, and sometimes move in a 
contrary direction, are implied in the words “ free 
to move.” If it is a law of nature that bodies 
tend to move towards one another in a certain 
way; it is another and no less true law of nature 
that, if bodies are not free to move as they tend 
to do, either in consequence of an obstacle, or of 
a contrary impulse from some other source of 
energy than that to which we give the name of 
gravitation, they either stop still, or go another 
way. 

Scientifically speaking, it is the acme of absurd¬ 
ity to talk of a man defying the law of gravitation 
when he lifts his arm. The general store of 
energy in the universe working through terrestrial 
matter is doubtless tending to bring the man’s 
arm down; but the particular fraction of that 
energy which is working through certain of his 
nervous and muscular organs is tending to drive 
it up, and more energy being expended on the 
arm in the upward than in the downward direc¬ 
tion, the arni goes up accordingly. But the law 
of gravitation is no more defied, in this case, than 
when a grocer throws so much sugar into the 
empty pan of his scales that the oue which 
contains the weight kicks the beam. 

The tenacity of the wonderful fallacy that the 
laws of nature are agents, instead of being, as they 
really are, a mere record of experience, upon 
which we base our interpretations of that which 


78 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


does happen, and our anticipation of that which 
will happen, is an interesting psychological fact; 
and would be unintelligible if the tendency of 
the human mind towards realism were less strong. 

Even at the present day, and in the writings of 
men who would at once repudiate scholastic realism 
in any form, “ law ” is often inadvertently em¬ 
ployed in the sense of cause, just as, in common 
life, a man will say that he is compelled by the 
law to do so and so, when, in point of fact, all he 
means is that the law orders him to do it, and 
tells him what will happen if he does not do it. 
We commonly hear of bodies falling to the ground 
by reason of the law of gravitation, whereas that law 
is simply the record of the fact that, according to 
all experience, they have so fallen (when free to 
move), and of the grounds of a reasonable expec¬ 
tation that they will so fall. If it should be w T orth 
anybody’s while to seek for examples of such 
misuse of language on my own part, I am not at 
all sure he might not succeed, though I have 
usually been on my guard against such looseness 
of expression. If I am guilty, I do penance before¬ 
hand, and only hope that I may thereby deter 
others from committing the like fault. And I 
venture on this personal observation by way of 
showing that I have no wish to bear hardly 
on the preacher for falling into an error for which 
he might find good precedents. But it is one of 
those errors which, in the case of a person engaged 


II 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


79 


in scientific pursuits, do little harm, because it is 
corrected as soon as its consequences become 
obvious; while those who know physical science 
only by name are, as has been seen, easily led to 
build a mighty fabric of unrealities on this funda¬ 
mental fallacy. In fact, the habitual use of the word 
“ law/’ in the sense of an active thing, is almost 
a mark of pseudo-science; it characterises the 
writings of those who have appropriated the 
forms of science without knowing anything of 
its substance. 

There are two classes of these people: those 
who are ready to believe in any miracle so long as 
it is guaranteed by ecclesiastical authority; and 
those who are ready to believe in any miracle so 
long as it has some different guarantee. The 
believers in what are ordinarily called miracles— 
those who accept the miraculous narratives which 
they are taught to think are essential elements of 
religious doctrine—are in the one category; 
the spirit-rappers, table-turners, and all the other 
devotees of the occult sciences of our day are in 
the other: and, if they disagree in most things 
they agree in this, namely, that they ascribe to 
science a dictum that is not scientific ; and that 
they endeavour to upset the dictum thus foisted 
on science by a realistic argument which is 
equally unscientific. 

It is asserted, for example, that, on a particular 
occasion, water was turned into wine; and, on the 
121 


80 


TSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


other hand, it is asserted that a man or a woman 
“levitated” to the ceiling, floated about there, 
and finally sailed out by the window. And it is 
assumed that the pardonable scepticism, with 
which most scientific men receive these state¬ 
ments, is due to the fact that they feel themselves 
justified in denying the possibility of any such 
metamorphosis of water, or of any such levi¬ 
tation, because such events are contrary to the 
laws of nature. So the question of the preacher 
is triumphantly put: How do you know that 
there are not “'higher ” laws of nature than your 
chemical and physical laws, and that these higher 
laws may not intervene and “ wreck ” the latter ? 

The plain answer to this question is, Why 
should anybody be called upon to say how he 
knows that which he does not know ? You are 
assuming that laws are agents—efficient causes 
of that which happens—and that one law can 
interfere with another. To us, that assumption 
is as nonsensical as if you were to talk of a propo¬ 
sition of Euclid being the cause of the diagram 
which illustrates it, or of the integral calculus 
interfering with the rule of three. Your question 
really implies that we pretend to complete know¬ 
ledge not only of all past and present phenomena, 
but of all that are possible in the future, and we 
leave all that sort of thing to the adepts of 
esoteric Buddhism. Our pretensions are infinitely 
more modest. We have succeeded in finding out 


II 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


81 


the rules of action of a little bit of the universe; 
we call these rules “ laws of nature,” not because 
anybody knows whether they bind nature or not, 
but because we find it is obligatory on us to take 
them into account, both as actors under nature, 
and as interpreters of nature. We have any 
quantity of genuine miracles of our own, and if 
you will furnish us with as good evidence of your 
miracles as we have of ours, we shall be quite 
happy to accept them and to amend our expression 
of the laws of nature in accordance with the new 
facts. 

As to the particular cases adduced, we are so 
perfectly fair-minded as to be willing to help your 
case as far as we can. You are quite mistaken in 
supposing that anybody who is acquainted with the 
possibilities of physical science will undertake 
categorically to deny that water may be turned 
into wine. Many very competent judges are 
already inclined to think that the bodies, which we 
have hitherto called elementary, are really com¬ 
posite arrangements of the particles of a uniform 
primitive matter. Supposing that view to be 
correct, there would be no more theoretical diffi¬ 
culty about turning water into alcohol, ethereal 
and colouring matters, than there is, at this pres¬ 
ent moment, any practical difficulty in working 
other such miracles; as when we turn sugar into 
alcohol, carbonic acid, glycerine, and succinic acid; 
or transmute gas-refuse into perfumes rarer than 


82 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


musk and dyes richer than Tyrian purple. If the 
so-called “ elements/’ oxygen and hydrogen, which 
compose water, are aggregates of the same ultimate 
particles, or physical units, as those which enter 
into the structure of the so-called element “ car¬ 
bon,” it is obvious that alcohol and other substances, 
composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, may 
be produced by a rearrangement of some of the 
units of oxygen and hydrogen into the “ element ” 
carbon, and their synthesis with the rest of the 
oxygen and hydrogen. 

Theoretically, therefore, we can have no sort of 
objection to your miracle. And our reply to the 
levitators is just the same. Why should not your 
friend “ levitate ” ? Fish are said to rise and sink 
in the water by altering the volume of an internal 
air-receptacle; and there may be many ways 
science, as yet, knows nothing of, by which we, who 
live at the bottom of an ocean of air, may do the 
same thing. Dialectic gas and wind appear to be 
by no means wanting among you, and why should 
not long practice in pneumatic philosophy have 
resulted in the internal generation of something a 
thousand times rarer than hydrogen, by which, in 
accordance with the most ordinary natural laws, 
you would not only rise to the ceiling and float 
there in quasi-angelic posture, but perhaps, as one 
of your feminine adepts is said to have done, flit 
swifter than train or telegram to “ still-vexed 
Bermoothes,” and twit Ariel, if he happens to be 


II 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


83 


there, fora sluggard ? We have not the presump¬ 
tion to deny the possibility of anything you affirm ; 
only, as our brethren are particular about evidence, 
do give us as much to go upon as may save us from 
being roared down by their inextinguishable 
laughter. 

Enough of the realism which clings about “ laws.” 
There are plenty of other exemplifications of its 
vitality in modern science, but I will cite only one 
of them. 

This is the conception of “ vital force ” which 
comes straight from the philosophy of Aristotle. 
It is a fundamental proposition of that philosophy 
that a natural object is composed of two constitu¬ 
ents—the one its matter, conceived as inert or 
even, to a certain extent, opposed to orderly and 
purposive motion; the other its form, conceived as 
a quasi-spiritual something, containing or con¬ 
ditioning the actual activities of the body and the 
potentiality of its possible activities. 

I am disposed to think that the prominence of 
this conception in Aristotle’s theory of things 
arose from the circumstance that he was, to begin 
with and throughout his life, devoted to biological 
studies. In fact it is a notion which must force 
itself upon the mind of any one who studies 
biological phenomena, without reference to general 
physics, as they now stand. Everybody who 
observes the obvious phenomena of the develop¬ 
ment of a seed into a tree, or of an egg into an 


84 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


animal, will note that a relatively formless mass of 
matter gradually grows, takes a definite shape and 
structure, and, finally, begins to perform actions 
which contribute towards a certain end, namely, 
the maintenance of the individual in the first 
place, and of the species in the second. Starting 
from the axiom that every event has a cause, we 
have here the causa finalis manifested in the last 
set of phenomena, the causa materialis and formalis 
in the first, while the existence of a causa efficiens 
within the seed or egg and its product, is a corollary 
from the phenomena of growth and metamorphosis, 
which proceed in unbroken succession and make 
up the life of the animal or plant. 

Thus, at starting, the egg or seed is matter 
having a “ form ” like all other material bodies. 
But this form has the peculiarity, in contradistinc¬ 
tion to lower substantial “ forms,” that it is a power 
which constantly works towards an end by means 
of living organisation. 

So far as I know, Leibnitz is the only philosopher 
(at the same time a man of science, in the modern 
sense, of the first rank) who has noted that the 
modern conception of Force, as a sort of atmosphere 
enveloping the particles of bodies, and having 
potential or actual activity, is simply a new name 
for the Aristotelian Form. 1 In modern biology, up 
till within quite recent times, the Aristotelian con- 

1 “ Les formes des anciens ou Entelechies ne sont autre cliose 
que les forces(Leibnitz, Lettre au Plre Bouvet , 1697). 


II 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


85 


ception held undisputed sway; living matter was 
endowed with “ vital force,” and that accounted for 
everything. Whosoever was not satisfied with 
that explanation was treated to that very “ plain 
argument ”—“confound you eternally ”—where- 
with Lord Peter overcomes the doubts of his 
brothers in the “ Tale of a Tub ” “ Materialist” was 
the mildest term applied to him—fortunate if he 
escaped pelting with “ infidel 99 and “ atheist.” 
There may be scientific Pip Van Winkles about, 
who still hold by vital force; but among those 
biologists who have not been asleep for the last 
quarter of a century “ vital force ” no longer 
figures in the vocabulary of science. It is a patent 
survival of realism; the generalisation from ex¬ 
perience that all living bodies exhibit certain 
activities of a definite character is made the basis 
of the notion that every living body contains an 
entity, “ vital force,” which is assumed to be the 
cause of those activities. 

It is remarkable, in looking back, to notice to 
what an extent this and other survivals of 
scholastic realism arrested or, at any rate, impeded 
the application of sound scientific principles to 
the investigation of biological phenomena. When 
I was beginning to think about these matters, the 
scientific world was occasionally agitated by 
discussions respecting the nature of the “ species ” 
and “genera” of Naturalists, of a different order 
from the disputes of a later time. I think most 


86 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


were agreed that a “species” was something 
which existed objectively, somehow or other, and 
had been created by a Divine fiat. As to the 
objective reality of genera, there was a good deal 
of difference of opinion. On the other hand, 
there were a few who could see no objective reality 
in anything but individuals, and looked upon both 
species and genera as hypostatised universals. As 
for myself, I seem to have unconsciously emulated 
William of Occam, inasmuch as almost the first 
public discourse I ever ventured upon, dealt with 
“ Animal Individuality,” and its tendency was to 
fight the Nominalist battle even in that quarter. 

Realism appeared in still stranger forms at the 
time to which I refer. The community of plan 
which is observable in each great group of animals 
was hypostatised into a Platonic idea with the 
appropriate name of “ archetype,” and we were 
told, as a disciple of Philo-Judaeus might have 
told us, that this realistic figment was “ the 
archetypal light” by which Nature has been 
guided amidst the “ wreck of worlds.” So, again, 
another naturalist, who had no less earned a well- 
deserved reputation by his contributions to positive 
knowledge, put forward a theory of the production 
of living things which, as nearly as the increase 
of knowledge allowed, was a reproduction of the 
doctrine inculcated by the Jewish Cabbala. 

Annexing the archetype notion, and carrying it 
to its full logical consequence, the author of this 


II 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


87 


theory conceived that the species of animals and 
plants were so many incarnations of the thoughts 
of God—material representations of Divine 
ideas—during the particular period of the world’s 
history at which they existed. But, under the 
influence of the embryological and palaeontological 
discoveries of modern times, which had already 
lent some scientific support to the revived ancient 
theories of cosmical evolution or emanation, the 
ingenious author of this speculation, while denying 
and repudiating the ordinary theory of evolution 
by successive modification of individuals, main¬ 
tained and endeavoured to prove the occurrence 
of a progressive modification in the divine ideas 
of successive epochs. 

On the foundation of a supposed elevation of 
organisation in the whole living population of any 
epoch, as compared with that of its predecessor, 
and a supposed complete difference in species 
between the populations of any two epochs 
(neither of which suppositions has stood the test 
of further inquiry), the author of this speculation 
based his conclusion that the Creator had, so to 
speak, improved upon his thoughts as time went 
on; and that, as each such amended scheme of 
creation came up, the embodiment of the earlier 
divine thoughts was swept away by a universal 
catastrophe, and an incarnation of the improved 
ideas took its place. Only after the last such 
" wreck ” thus brought about, did the embodiment 


88 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


II 


of a divine thought, in the shape of the first man, 
make its appearance as the ne plus ultra of the 
cosmogonical process. 

I imagine that Louis Agassiz, the genial back¬ 
woodsman of the science of my young days, who 
did more to open out new tracks in the scientific 
forest than most men, would have been much 
surprised to learn that he was preaching the 
doctrine of the Cabbala, pure and simple. Ac¬ 
cording to this modification of Neoplatonism by 
contact with Hebrew speculation, the divine 
essence is unknowable—without form or attribute; 
but the interval between it and the world of 
sense is filled by intelligible entities, which are 
nothing but the familiar hypostatised abstractions 
of the realists. These have emanated, like 
immense waves of light, from the divine centre, 
and, as ten consecutive zones of Sephiroth, form 
the universe. The farther away from the centre, 
the more the primitive light wanes, until the 
periphery ends in those mere negations, darkness 
and evil, which are the essence of matter. On 
this, the divine agency transmitted through the 
Sephiroth operates after the fashion of the Aris¬ 
totelian forms, and, at first, produces the lowest of 
a series of worlds. After a certain duration the 
primitive world is demolished and its fragments 
used up in making a better; and this process is 
repeated, until at length a final world, with man 
for its crown and finish, makes its appearance. 


II 


PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 


89 


It is needless to trace the process of retrogressive 
metamorphosis by which, through the agency of 
the Messiah, the steps of the process of evolution 
here sketched are retraced. Sufficient has been 
said to prove that the extremist realism current 
in the philosophy of the thirteenth century can 
be fully matched by the speculations of our own 
time. 


Ill 

SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 

) 

[ 1887 ] 

In the opening sentences of a contribution to the 
last number of this Review , 1 the Duke of Argyll 
has favoured me with a lecture on the proprieties 
of controversy, to which I should be disposed to 
listen with more docility if his Grace’s precepts 
appeared to me to be based upon rational principles, 
or if his example were more exemplary. 

With respect to the latter point, the Duke has 
thought fit to entitle his article “ Professor Huxley 
on Canon Liddon,” and thus forces into prominence 
an element of personality, which those who read 
the paper which is the object of the Duke’s 
animadversions will observe I have endeavoured, 
most carefully, to avoid. My criticisms dealt with 
a report of a sermon, published in a newspaper, 
and thereby addressed to all the world. Whether 
that sermon was preached by A or B was not a 


1 Nineteenth Century , March 1887. 


Ill 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


91 


matter of the smallest consequence; and I went 
out of my way to absolve the learned divine to 
whom the discourse was attributed, from the 
responsibility for statements which, for anything I 
knew to the contrary, might contain imperfect, or 
inaccurate, representations of his views. The 
assertion that I had the wish, or was beset, by any 
“ temptation to attack’ Canon Liddon is simply 
contrary to fact. 

But suppose that if, instead of sedulously 
avoiding even the appearance of such attack, I 
had thought fit to take a different course ; suppose 
that, after satisfying myself that the eminent 
clergyman whose name is paraded by the Duke of 
Argyll had really uttered the words attributed to 
him from the pulpit of St. Paul’s, what right 
would any one have to find fault with my action 
on grounds either of justice, expediency, or good 
taste ? 

Establishment has its duties as well as its 
rights. The clergy of a State Church enjoy many 
advantages over those of unprivileged and unen¬ 
dowed religious persuasions; but they lie under a 
correlative responsibility to the State, and to 
every member of the body politic. I am not 
aware that any sacredness attaches to sermons. 
If preachers stray beyond the doctrinal limits set 
by lay lawyers, the Privy Council will see to it; 
and, if they think fit to use their pulpits for the 
promulgation of literary, or historical, or scientific 


92 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


errors, it is not only the right, but the duty, of the 
humblest layman, who may happen to be better 
informed, to correct the evil effects of such perver¬ 
sion of the opportunities which the State affords 
them; and such misuse of the authority which its 
support lends them. Whatever else it may 
claim to be, in its relations with the State, the 
Established Church is a branch of the Civil 
Service; and, for those who repudiate the eccle¬ 
siastical authority of the clergy, they are merely 
civil servants, as much responsible to the English 
people for the proper performance of their duties 
as any others. 

The Duke of Argyll tells us that the “ work 
and calling” of the clergy prevent them from 
“ pursuing disputation as others can.” I wonder if 
his Grace ever reads the so-called “ religious ” news¬ 
papers. It is not an occupation which I should 
commend to any one who wishes to employ his 
time profitably; but a very short devotion to this 
exercise will suffice to convince him that the 
“ pursuit of disputation,” carried to a degree of 
acrimony and vehemence unsurpassed in lay con¬ 
troversies, seems to be found quite compatible with 
the “work and calling” of a remarkably large 
number of the clergy. 

Finally, it appears to me that nothing can be 
m worse taste than the assumption that a body of 
English gentlemen can, by any possibility, desire 
that immunity from criticism which the Duke of 


Ill 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


93 


Argyll claims for them. Nothing would be more 
personally offensive to me than the supposition 
that I shirked criticism, just or unjust, of any 
lecture I ever gave. I should be utterly ashamed 
of myself if, when I stood up as an instructor of 
others, I had not taken every pains to assure 
myself of the truth of that which I was about to 
say; and I should feel myself bound to be even 
more careful with a popular assembly, who would 
take me more or less on trust, than with an 
audience of competent and critical experts. 

I decline to assume that the standard of 
morality, in these matters, is lower among the 
clergy than it is among scientific men. I refuse to 
think that the priest who stands up before a con¬ 
gregation, as the minister and interpreter of the 
Divinity, is less careful in his utterances, less 
ready to meet adverse comment, than the layman 
who comes before his audience, as the minister 
and interpreter of nature. Yet what should we 
think of the man of science who, when his 
ignorance or his carelessness was exposed, whined 
about the want of delicacy of his critics, or pleaded 
his “ work and calling ” as a reason for being let 
alone ? 

No man, nor any body of men, is good enough, 
or wise enough, to dispense with the tonic of 
criticism. Nothing has done more harm to the 
clergy than the practice, too common among 
laymen, of regarding them, when in the pulpit, as 


94 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


a sort of chartered libertines, whose divagations 
are not to be taken seriously. And I am well 
assured that the distinguished divine, to whom the 
sermon is attributed, is the last person who would 
desire to avail himself of the dishonouring pro¬ 
tection which has been superfluously thrown over 
him. 

So much for the lecture on propriety. But the 
Duke of Argyll, to whom the hortatory style 
seems to come naturally, does me the honour to 
make my sayings the subjects of a series of other 
admonitions, some on philosophical, some on 
geological, some on biological topics. I can but 
rejoice that the Duke’s authority in these matters 
is not always employed to show that I am ignorant 
of them; on the contrary, I meet with an amount 
of agreement, even of approbation, for which I 
proffer such gratitude as may be due, even if 
that gratitude is sometimes almost overshadowed 
by surprise. 

I am unfeignedly astonished to find that the 
Duke of Argyll, who professes to intervene on 
behalf of the preacher, does really, like another 
Balaam, bless me altogether in respect of the 
main issue. 

I denied the justice of the preacher’s ascription 
to men of science of the doctrine that miracles 
are incredible, because they are violations of 
natural law; and the Duke of Argyll says that he 
believes my “denial to be well-founded. The 


Ill 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


On 


preacher was answering an objection which has 
now been generally abandoned.” Either the 
preacher knew this or he did not know it. It 
seems to me, as a mere lay teacher, to be a pity 
that the “ great dome of St. Paul’s ” should have 
been made to “ echo ” (if so be that such stentorian 
effects were really produced) a statement which, 
admitting the first alternative, was unfair, and, 
admitting the second, was ignorant . 1 

Having thus sacrificed one half of the preacher’s 
arguments, the Duke of Argyll proceeds to make 
equally short work with the other half. It ap¬ 
pears that he fully accepts my position that the 
occurrence of those events, which the preacher 
speaks of as catastrophes, is no evidence of dis¬ 
order, inasmuch as such catastrophes may be 
necessary occasional consequences of uniform 
changes. Whence I conclude, his Grace agrees 
with me, that the talk about royal laws “wrecking ” 

1 The Duke of Argyll speaks of the recent date of the demon¬ 
stration of the fallacy of the. doctrine in question. “ Recent ” 
is a relative term, but I may mention that the question is fully 
discussed in my book on llume ; which, if I may believe my 
publishers, has been read by a good many people since it ap¬ 
peared in 1879. Moreover, I observe, from a note at page 89 of 
The Reign of Law , a work to which I shall have occasion to 
advert by and by, that the Duke of Argyll draws attention to 
the circumstance that, so long ago as 1866, the views which I 
hold on this subject were well known. The Duke, in fact, 
writing about this time, says, after quoting a phrase of mine : 
f ‘ The question of miracles seems now to be admitted on all 
hands to be simply a question of evidence.” In science, we 
think that a teacher who ignores views which have been 
discussed coram gopulo for twenty years, is hardly up to the 
mark. 


122 


96 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


ordinary laws may be eloquent metaphor, but is 
also nonsense. 

And now comes a further surprise. After 
having given these superfluous stabs to the slain 
body of the preacher’s argument, my good ally 
remarks, with magnificent calmness : “ So far, 
then, the preacher and the professor are at one.” 
“ Let them smoke the calumet.” By all means : 
smoke would be the most appropriate symbol of 
this wonderful attempt to cover a retreat. After 
all, the Duke has come to bury the preacher, 
not to praise him ; only he makes the funeral 
obsequies look as much like a triumphal pro¬ 
cession as possible. 

So far as the questions between the preacher 
and myself are concerned, then, I may feel happy. 
The authority of the Duke of Argyll is ranged on 
my side. But the Duke has raised a number of 
other questions, with respect to which I fear I 
shall have to dispense with his support—nay, 
even be compelled to differ from him as much, or 
more, than I have done about his Grace’s new 
rendering of the “ benefit of clergy.” 

In discussing catastrophes, the Duke indulges 
in statements, partly scientific, partly anecdotic, 
which appear to me to be somewhat misleading. 
We are told, to begin with, that Sir Charles 
Lyell’s doctrine respecting the proper mode of 
interpreting the facts of geology (which, is com¬ 
monly called uniformitarianism) “does not hold 


Ill 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


97 


its head quite so high as it once did.” That is 
great news indeed. But is it true ? All I can 
say is that I am aware of nothing that has 
happened of late that can in any way justify 
it; and my opinion is, that the body of Lyells 
doctrine, as laid down in that great work, “The 
Principles of Geology,” whatever may have hap¬ 
pened to its head, is a chief and permanent con¬ 
stituent of the foundations of geological science. 

But this question cannot be advantageously dis¬ 
cussed, unless we take some pains to discriminate 
between the essential part of the uniformitarian 
doctrine and its accessories ; and it does not 
appear that the Duke of Argyll has carried his 
studies of geological philosophy so far as this 
point. For he defines uniformitarianism to be 
the assumption of the “ extreme slowness and 
perfect continuity of all geological changes.” 

What “ perfect continuity ” may mean in this 
definition, I am by no means sure; but I can only 
imagine that it signifies the absence of any break 
in the course of natural order during the millions 
of years, the lapse of which. is recorded by 
geological phenomena. 

Is the Duke of Argyll prepared to say that any 
geologist of authority, at the present day, believes 
that there is the slightest evidence of the occur¬ 
rence of supernatural intervention, during the 
long ages of which the monuments are preserved 
to us in the crust of the earth ? And if he is not, 


98 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


Ill 


in what sense has this part of the uniformitarian 
doctrine, as he defines it, lowered its pretensions 
to represent scientific truth ? 

As to the “extreme slowness of all geological 
changes,” it is simply a popular error to regard 
that as, in any wise, a fundamental and necessary 
dogma of uniformitarianism. It is extremely 
astonishing to me that any one who has carefully 
studied Lyell’s great work can have so completely 
failed to appreciate its purport, which yet is “ writ 
large ” on the very title-page : “ The Principles of 
Geology, being an attempt to explain the former 
changes of the earth’s surface by reference to 
causes now in operation.” The essence of Lyell’s 
doctrine is here written so that those who run 
may read ; and it has nothing to do with the 
quickness or slowness of the past changes of the 
earth’s surface ; except in so far as existing 
analogous changes may go on slowly, and there¬ 
fore create a presumption in favour of the slowness 
of past changes. 

With that epigrammatic force which character¬ 
ises his style, Bwffon wrote, nearly a hundred and 
fifty years ago, in his famous “ Theorie de la 
Terre ”: “ Pour juger de ce qui est arriv4, et meme 
de ce qui arrivera, nous n’avons qu’k examiner ce 
qui arrive.” The key of the past, as of the future, 
is to be sought in the present; and, only when 
known causes of change have been shown to be 
insufficient, have we any right to have recourse to 


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unknown causes. Geology is as much a historical 
science as archaeology; and I apprehend that all 
sound historical investigation rests upon this 
axiom. It underlay all Hutton’s work and ani¬ 
mated Lyell and Scope in their successful efforts 
to revolutionise the geology of half a century ago. 

There is no antagonism whatever, and there 
never was, between the belief in the views which 
had their chief and unwearied advocate in Lyell 
and the belief in the occurrence of catastrophes. 
The first edition of Lyell’s “ Principles,” published 
in 1830, lies before me ; and a large part of the 
first volume is occupied by an account of volcanic, 
seismic, and diluvial catastrophes which have 
occurred within the historical period. Moreover, 
the author, over and over again, expressly draws 
the attention of his readers to the consistency of 
catastrophes with his doctrine. 

Notwithstanding, therefore, that we have not witnessed with¬ 
in the last three thousand years the devastation by deluge of a 
large continent, yet, as we may predict the future occurrence of 
such catastrophes, we are authorised to regard them as part of 
the present order of nature, and they maj be introduced into 
geological speculations respecting the past, provided that we do 
not imagine them to have been more frequent or general than 
we expect them to be in time to come (vol. i. p. 89). 

Again:— 

If we regard each of the causes separately, which we know to 
be at present the most instrumental in remodelling the state of 
the surface, we shall find that we must expect each to be in 
action for thousands of years, without producing any extensive 


100 


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III 


alterations in the habitable surface, and then to give rise, during 
a very brief period, to important revolutions (vol. ii. p. 161). 1 

Lyell quarrelled with the catastrophists then, 
by no means because they assumed that catas¬ 
trophes occur and have occurred, but because 
they had got into the habit of calling on their 
god Catastrophe to help them, when they ought 
to have been putting their shoulders to the wheel 
of observation of the present course of nature, in 
order to help themselves out of their difficulties. 
And geological science has become what it is, 
chiefly because geologists have gradually accepted 
Lyell’s doctrine and followed his precepts. 

So far as I know anything about the matter, 
there is nothing that can be called proof, that the 
causes of geological phenomena operated more in¬ 
tensely or more rapidly, at any time botween the 
older tertiary and the oldest palaeozoic epochs 
than they have done between the older tertiary 
epoch and the present day. And if that is so, 
uniformitarianism, even as limited by Lyell, 2 has no 

* See also vol. i. p. 460. In the ninth edition (1853), pub¬ 
lished twenty-three years after the first, Lyell deprives even the 
most careless reader of any excuse for misunderstanding him : 
“So in regard to subterranean movements, the theory of the 
perpetual uniformity of the force which they exert on the earth- 
crust is quite consistent with the admission of their alternate 
development and suspension for indefinite periods within limited 
geographical areas” (p. 187). 

2 A great many years ago (Presidential Address to the Geo¬ 
logical Society, 1869) I ventured to indicate that which seemed 
to me to be the weak point, not in the fundamental principles 
of uniformitarianism, but in uniformitarianism as taught by 
Lyell. It lay, to my mind, in the refusal by Hutton, and in a 


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call to lower its crest. But if the facts were other¬ 
wise,thepositionLyell took up remains impregnable. 
He did not say that the geological operations of 
nature were never more rapid, or more vast, than 
they are now ; what he did maintain is the very 
different proposition that there is no good evidence 
of anything of the kind. And that proposition 
has not yet been shown to be incorrect. 

I owe more than I can tell to the careful study 
of the “ Principles of Geology ” in my young 
days; and, long before the year 1856, my mind 
was familiar with the truth that “ the doctrine of 
uniformity is not incompatible with great and 
sudden changes,” which, as I have shown, is 
taught totidem verbis in that work. Even had it 
been possible for me to shut my eyes to the sense 
of what I had read in the “ Principles,” Whewell’s 
" Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,” published 
in 1840, a work with which I was also tolerably 
familiar, must have opened them. For the 
always acute, if not always profound, author, in 
arguing against Lyell’s uniformitarianism, ex- 

less degree by Lyell, to look beyond the limits of the time 
recorded by the stratified rocks. I said: “This attempt to 
limit, at a particular point, the progress of inductive and de¬ 
ductive reasoning from the things which are to the things which 
were —this faithlessness to its own logic, seems to me to have 
cost uniformitarianism the place as the permanent form of geo¬ 
logical speculation which it might otherwise have held ” {Lay 
Sermons, p. 260). The context shows that “ uniformitarianism ” 
here means that doctrine, as limited in application by Hutton 
and Lyell, and that what I mean by “evolutionism” is con' 
sisient and thoroughgoing uniformitarianism. 


102 


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nr 

pressly points out that it does not in any way 
contravene the occurrence of catastrophes. 

With regard to such occurrences [earthquakes, deluges, etc.], 
terrible as they appear at the time, they may not much affect 
the average rate of change: there may be a cycle , though an 
irregular one, of rapid and slow change : and if such cycles go 
on succeeding each other, we may still call the order of nature 
uniform, notwithstanding the periods of violence which it in¬ 
volves. 1 

The reader who has followed me through this 
brief chapter of the history of geological philoso¬ 
phy will probably find the following passage in 
the paper of the Duke of Argyll to be not a little 
remarkable:— 

Many years ago, when I had the honour of being President of 
the British Association, ' 2 1 ventured to point out, in the presence 
and in the hearing of that most distinguished man [Sir C. Lyell] 
that the doctrine of uniformity was not incompatible with great 
and sudden changes, since cycles of these and other cycles of 
comparative rest might well be constituent parts of that uni¬ 
formity which he asserted. Lyell did not object to this extended 
interpretation of his own doctrine, and indeed expressed to me 
his entire concurrence. 

I should think he did ; for, as I have shown, 
there was nothing in it that Lyell himself had not 
said, six-and-twenty years before, and enforced, 
three years before; and it is almost verbally 
identical with the view of uniformitarianism 
taken by Whewell, sixteen years before, in a work 
with which, one would think, that any one who 

1 Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p. 670. New 
edition, 1847. 2 At Glasgow in 1856. 


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undertakes to discuss the philosophy of science 
should be familiar. 

Thirty years have elapsed since the beginner of 
1856 persuaded himself that he enlightened the 
foremost geologist of his time, and one of the most 
acute and far-seeing men of science of any time, 
as to the scope of the doctrines which the veteran 
philosopher had grown gray in promulgating; 
and the Duke of Argyll’s acquaintance with the 
literature of geology has not, even now, become 
sufficiently profound to dissipate that pleasant 
delusion. 

If the Duke of Argyll’s guidance in that branch 
of physical science, with which alone he has 
given evidence of any practical acquaintance, is 
thus unsafe, I may breathe more freely in setting 
my opinion against the authoritative deliverances 
of his Grace about matters which lie outside the 
province of geology. 

And here the Duke’s paper offers me such a 
wealth of opportunities that choice becomes em¬ 
barrassing. I must bear in mind the good old 
adage, “ Non multa sed multum.” Tempting as 
it would be to follow the Duke through his 
labyrinthine misunderstandings of the ordinary 
terminology of philosophy, and to comment on 
the curious unintelligibility which hangs about 
his frequent outpourings of fervid language, limits 
of space oblige me to restrict myself to those 
points, the discussion of which may help to en- 


104 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


lighten the public in respect of matters of more 
importance than the competence of my Mentor 
for the task which he has undertaken. 

I am not sure when the employment of the 
word Law, in the sense in which we speak of laws 
of nature, commenced, but examples of it may be 
found in the works of Bacon, Descartes, and 
Spinoza. Bacon employs “ Law ” as the equiva¬ 
lent of “ Form,” and I am inclined to think that 
he may be responsible for a good deal of the 
confusion that has subsequently arisen; but I am 
not aware that the term is used by other authori¬ 
ties, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
in any other sense than that of “rule” or “definite 
order” of the coexistence of things or succession 
of events in nature. Descartes speaks of “ regies, 
que je nomme les lois de la nature.” Leibnitz 
says “ loi ou regie gi'nerale,” as if he considered 
the terms interchangeable. 

The Duke of Argyll, however, affirms that the 
“ law of gravitation ” as put forth by Newton was 
something more than the statement of an observed 
order. He admits that Kepler’s three laws “ were 
an observed order of facts and nothing more.” 
As to the law of gravitation, “ it contains an 
element which Kepler’s laws did not contain, even 
an element of causation, the recognition of which 
belongs to a higher category of intellectual con¬ 
ceptions than that which is concerned in the mere 
observation and record of separate and apparently 


Ill 


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105 


unconnected facts.” There is hardly a line in 
these paragraphs which appears to me to be in¬ 
disputable. But, to confine myself to the matter 
in hand, I cannot conceive that any one who had 
taken ordinary pains to acquaint himself with the 
real nature of either Kepler’s or Newton’s work 
could have written them. That the labours of 
Kepler, of all men in the world, should be Called 
“ mere observation and record,” is truly wonderful. 
And any one who will look into the “ Principia,” 
or the “ Optics,” or the “ Letters to Bentley,” will 
see, even if he has no more special knowledge of 
the topics discussed than I have, that Newton 
over and over again insisted that he had nothing 
to do with gravitation as a physical cause, and 
that when he used the terms attraction, force, and 
the like, he employed them, as he says, “ mathe¬ 
matics ” and not “ phynick” 

How these attractions [of gravity, magnetism, and electricity] 
may be performed, I do not here consider. What I call attrac¬ 
tion may be performed by impulse or by some other means un¬ 
known to me. I use that word here to signify only in a general 
way any force by which bodies tend towards one another, what¬ 
ever be the cause. 1 

According to my reading of the best authorities 
upon the history of science, Newton discovered 
neither gravitation, nor the law of gravitation; 
nor did he pretend to offer more than a conjecture 
as to the causation of gravitation. Moreover, his 

1 Optics, query 31. 


106 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


assertion tliat the notion of a body acting where 
it is not, is one that no competent thinker could 
entertain, is antagonistic to the whole current 
conception of attractive and repulsive forces, and 
therefore of “ the attractive force of gravitation.” 
What, then, was that labour of unsurpassed mag¬ 
nitude and excellence and of immortal influence 
which Newton did perform ? In the first place, 
Newton defined the laws, rules, or observed order 
of the phenomena of motion, which come under 
our daily observation, with greater precision than 
had been before attained; and, by following out, 
with marvellous power and subtlety, the mathe¬ 
matical consequences of these rales, he almost 
created the modern science of pure mechanics. 
In the second place, applying exactly the same 
method to the explication of the facts of astro¬ 
nomy as that which was applied a century and a 
half later to the facts of geology by Lyell, he set 
himself to solve the following problem. Assuming 
that all bodies, free to move, tend to approach 
one another as the earth and the bodies on it do; 
assuming that the strength of that tendency is 
directly as the mass and inversely as the squares 
of the distances; assuming that the laws of 
motion, determined for terrestrial bodies, hold 
good throughout the universe ; assuming that 
the planets and their satellites were created and 
placed at their observed mean distances, and that 
each received a certain impulse from the Creator; 


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will the form of the orbits, the varying rates of 
motion of the planets, and the ratio between 
those rates and their distances from the sun, 
which must follow by mathematical reasoning 
from these premisses, agree with the order of 
facts determined by Kepler and others, or not ? 

Newton, employing mathematical methods 
which are the admiration of adepts, but Which 
no one but himself appears to have been able 
to use with ease, not only answered this question 
in the affirmative, but stayed not his constructive 
genius before it had founded modern physical 
astronomy. 

The historians of mechanical and of astronomi¬ 
cal science appear to be agreed that he was the 
first person who clearly and distinctly put forth 
the hypothesis that the phenomena comprehended 
under the general name of “ gravity ” follow the 
same order throughout the universe, and that all 
material bodies exhibit these phenomena; so that, 
in this sense, the idea of universal gravitation 
may, doubtless, be properly ascribed to him. 

Newton proved that the laws of Kepler were 
particular consequences of the laws of motion 
and the law of gravitation—in other words, the 
reason of the first lay in the two latter. But to 
talk of the law of gravitation alone as the reason 
of Kepler’s laws, and still more as standing in 
any causal relation to Kepler’s laws, is simply a 
misuse of language. It would really be interest- 


108 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


ing if the Duke of Argyll would explain how lie 
proposes to set about showing that the elliptical 
form of the orbits of the planets, the constant 
area described by the radius vector, and the 
proportionality of the squares of the periodic 
times to the cubes of the distances from the sun, 
are either caused by the “ force of gravitation ” 
or deducible from the “ law of gravitation.” 
I conceive that it would be about as apposite to 
say that the various compounds of nitrogen with 
oxygen are caused by chemical attraction and 
deducible from the atomic theory. 

Newton assuredly lent no shadow of support to 
the modern pseudo-scientific philosophy which 
confounds laws with causes. I have not taken 
the trouble to trace out this commonest of 
fallacies to its first beginning ; but I was familiar 
with it in full bloom, more than thirty years ago, 
in a work which had a great vogue in its day—the 
“Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation”—■ 
of which the first edition was published in 1844. 

It is full of apt and forcible illustrations of 
pseudo-scientific realism. Consider, for example, 
this gem serene. When a boy who has climbed a 
tree loses his hold of the branch, “the law ot 
gravitation unrelentingly pulls him to the ground, 
and then he is hurt,” whereby the Almighty is 
quite relieved from any responsibility for the 
accident. Here is the “ law of gravitation ” 


ITT SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 109 

acting as a cause in a way quite in accordance 
with the Duke of Argyll’s conception of it. In 
fact, in the mind of the author of the “ Vestiges,” 
“ laws ” are existences intermediate between the 
Creator and His works, like the “ ideas ” of the 
Platonisers or the Logos of the Alexandrians. 1 
I may cite a passage which is quite in the vein of 
Philo :— 

We have seen powerful evidences that the construction of this 
globe and its associates ; and, inferentially, that of all the other 
globes in space, was the result, not of any immediate or personal 
exertion on the part of the Deity, but of natural laws which are 
the expression of His will. What is to hinder our supposing 
that the organic creation is also a result of natural laws 
which are in like manner an expression of His will 1 (p. 154, 1st 
edition). 

And creation “ operating by law ” is constantly 
cited as relieving the Creator from trouble about 
insignificant details. 

I am perplexed to picture to myself the state of 
mind which accepts these verbal juggleries. It is 
intelligible that the Creator should operate 
according to such rules as he might think fit to 
lay down for himself (and therefore according to 
law); but that would leave the operation of his 
will just as much a direct personal act as it would 
be under any other circumstances. I can also 
understand that (as in Leibnitz’s caricature of 
Newton’s views) the Creator might have made 


1 The author recognises this in his Explanations. 


110 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


the cosmical machine, and, after setting it going, 
have left it to itself till it needed repair. But 
then, by the supposition, his personal responsi¬ 
bility would have been involved in all that it did; 
just as much as a dynamiter is responsible for 
what happens, when he has set his machine going 
and left it to explode. 

The only hypothesis which gives a sort of mad 
consistency to the Vestigiarian’s views is the 
supposition that laws are a kind of angels or 
demiurgoi, who, being supplied with the Great 
Architect’s plau, were permitted to settle the 
details among themselves. Accepting this doc¬ 
trine, the conception of royal laws and plebeian 
laws, and of those more than Homeric contests in 
which the big laws “ wreck ” the little ones, 
becomes quite intelligible. And, in fact, the 
honour of the paternity of those remarkable ideas 
which come into full flower in the preacher’s dis¬ 
course, must, so far as my imperfect knowledge 
goes, be attributed to the author of the “ Vestiges.” 

But the author of the “Vestiges” is not the 
only writer who is responsible for the current 
pseudo-scientific mystifications which hang about 
the term “ law.” When I wrote my paper about 
“ Scientific and Pseudo-Scientific Realism,” 1 had 
not read a work by the Duke of Argyll, “ The 
Reign of Law,” which, I believe, has enjoyed, 
possibly still enjoys, a widespread popularity. 
But the vivacity of the Duke’s attack led me to 


Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 111 

think it possible that criticisms directed else¬ 
where might have come home to him. And, in 
fact, I find that the second chapter of the work in 
question, which is entitled “ Law; its definitions,” 
is, from my point of view, a sort of “ summa ” of 
pseudo-scientific philosophy. It will be worth 
while to examine it in some detail. 

In the first place, it is to be noted that the 
author of the “ Reign of Law ” admits that “ law,” 
in many cases, means nothing more than the 
statement of the order in which facts occur, or, as 
he says, “ an observed order of facts ” (p. 66). 
But his appreciation of the value of accuracy of 
expression does not hinder him from adding, 
almost in the same breath, “In this sense the 
laws of nature are simply those facts of nature 
which recur according to rule ” (p. 66). Thus 
“ laws,” which were rightly said to be the state¬ 
ment of an order of facts in one paragraph, are 
declared to be the facts themselves in the next. 

We are next told that, though it may be 
customary and permissible to use “ law ” in the 
sense of a statement of the order of facts, this is 
a low use of the word; and, indeed, two pages 
farther on, the writer, flatly contradicting himself, 
altogether denies its admissibility. 

An observed order of facts, to be entitled to the rank of a law, 
must be an order so constant and uniform as to indicate necessity, 
and necessity can only arise out of the action of some compelling 
force (p. 68). 


123 


112 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


This is undoubtedly one of the most singular 
propositions that I have ever met with in a 
professedly scientific work, and its rarity is 
embellished by another direct self-contradiction 
which it implies. For on the preceding page 
(67), when the Duke of Argyll is speaking of the 
laws of Kepler, which he admits to be laws, and 
which are types of that which men of science 
understand by “laws,” he says that they are 
“ simply and purely an order of facts.” Moreover, 
he adds : “ A very large proportion of the laws of 
every science are laws of this kind and in this 
sense.” 

If, according to the Duke of Argyll’s admission, 
law is understood, in this sense, thus widely and 
constantly by scientific authorities, where is the 
justification for his unqualified assertion that such 
statements of the observed order of facts are not 
“ entitled to the rank ” of laws ? 

But let us examine the consequences of the 
really interesting proposition I have just quoted. 
I presume that it is a law of nature that “a 
straight line is the shortest distance between two 
points.” This law affirms the constant association 
of a certain fact of form with a certain fact of 
dimension. Whether the notion of necessity 
which attaches to it has an a priori or an a 
posteriori origin is a question not relevant to the 
present discussion. But I would beg to be 
informed, if it is necessary, where is the “ com- 


m 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


113 


pelling force ” out of which the necessity arises ; 
and further, if it is not necessary, whether it loses 
the character of a law of nature ? 

I take it to be a law of nature, based on unex¬ 
ceptionable evidence, that the mass of matter 
remains unchanged, whatever chemical or other 
modifications it may undergo. This law is one of 
the foundations of chemistry. But it is by no 
means necessary. It is quite possible to imagine 
that the mass of matter should vary according to 
circumstances, as we know its weight does. More¬ 
over, the determination of the “ force ” which 
makes mass constant (if there is any intelligi¬ 
bility in that form of words) would not, so far as 
I can see, confer any more validity on the law 
than it has now. 

There is a law of nature, so well vouched by 
experience, that all mankind, from pure logicians 
in search of examples to parish sextons in search 
of fees, confide in it. This is the law that “ all 
men are mortal.” It is simply a statement of 
the observed order of facts that all men sooner or 
later die. I am not acquainted with any law of 
nature which is more “ constant and uniform ” 
than this. But will any one tell me that death is 
“ necessary ” ? Certainly there is no a, priori 
necessity in the case, for various men have been 
imagined to be immortal. And I should be glad 
to be informed of any “ necessity ” that can be 
deduced from biological considerations. It i3 


114 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


quite conceivable, as has recently been pointed 
out, that some of the lowest forms of life may 
be immortal, after a fashion. However this 
may be, I would further ask, supposing “all men 
are mortal ” to be a real law of nature, where and 
what is that to which, with any propriety, the 
title of “compelling force” of the law can be 
given ? 

On page 69, the Duke of Argyll asserts that the 
law of gravitation “ is a law in the sense, not 
merely of a rule, but of a cause.” But this 
revival of the teaching of the “Vestiges” has 
already been examined and disposed of; and when 
the Duke of Argyll states that the “ observed 
order ” which Kepler had discovered was simply a 
necessary consequence of the force of “gravita¬ 
tion,” I need not recapitulate the evidence which 
proves such a statement to be wholly fallacious. 
But it may be useful to say, once more, that, at 
this present moment, nobody knows anything 
about the existence of a “ force ” of gravitation 
apart from the fact; that Newton declared the 
ordinary notion of such force to be inconceivable; 
that various attempts have been made to account 
for the order of facts we call gravitation, without 
recourse to the notion of attractive force ; that, if 
such a force exists, it is utterly incompetent to 
account for Kepler’s laws, without taking into the 
reckoning a great number of other considerations ; 
and, finally, that all we know about the “ force * 


Ill 


SCIENCE AND TSEUDO-SCIENCE 


115 


of gravitation, or any other so-called “ force,” is 
that it is a name for the hypothetical cause of an 
observed order of facts. 

Thus, when the Duke of Argyll says : “ Force, as¬ 
certained according to some measure of its operation 
—this is indeed one of the definitions, but only 
one, of a scientific law ” (p. 71) I reply that it is a 
definition which must be repudiated by every one 
who possesses an adequate acquaintance with 
either the facts, or the philosophy, of science, and be 
relegated to the limbo of pseudo-scientific fallacies. 
If the human mind had never entertained this 
notion of “ force,” nay, if it substituted bare in¬ 
variable succession for the ordinary notion of 
causation, the idea of law, as the expression of a 
constantly-observed order, which generates a cor¬ 
responding intensity of expectation in our minds, 
would have exactly the same value, and play its 
part in real science, exactly as it does now. 

It is needless to extend further the present 
excursus on the origin and history of modern 
pseudo-science. Under such high patronage as 
it has enjoyed, it has grown and flourished until, 
nowadays, it is becoming somewhat rampant. 
It has its weekly “ Ephemerides,” in which every 
new pseudo-scientific mare’s-nest is hailed and 
belauded with the unconscious unfairness of 
ignorance ; and an army of “ reconcilers,” enlisted 
in its service, whose business seems to be to mix 
the black of dogma and the white of science into 


JIG 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


the neutral tint of what they call liberal 
theology. 

I remember that, not long after the publication of 
the “Vestiges,” a shrewd and sarcastic countryman 
of the author defined it as “ cauld kail made het 
again.” A cynic might find amusement in the 
reflection that, at the present time, the principles 
and the methods of the much-vilified Vestigiarian 
are being “made het again”; and are not only 
“ echoed by the dome of St. Paul’s,” but thundered 
from the castle of Inverary. But my turn of 
mind is not cynical, and I can but regret the 
waste of time and energy bestowed on the en¬ 
deavour to deal with the most difficult problems 
of science, by those who have neither undergone 
the discipline, nor possess the information, which 
are indispensable to the successful issue of such 
an enterprise. 

I have already had occasion to remark that the 
Duke of Argyll’s view's of the conduct of con¬ 
troversy are different from mine; and this much- 
to-be lamented discrepancy becomes yet more 
accentuated when the Duke reaches biological 
topics. Anything that was good enough for Sir 
Charles Lyell, in his department of study, is cer¬ 
tainly good enough for me in mine ; and I by no 
means demur to being pedagogically instructed 
about a variety of matters with which it has been 
the business of my life to try to acquaint myself. 
But the Duke of Argyll is not content with 


Ill 


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favouring me with his opinions about my own 
business; he also answers for mine; and, at that 
point, really the worm must turn. I am told 
that “ no one knows better than Professor 
Huxley ” a variety of things which I really do not 
know; and I am said to be a disciple of that 
“ Positive Philosophy ” which I have, over and 
over again, publicly repudiated in language which 
is certainly not lacking in intelligibility, whatever 
may be its other defects. 

I am told that I have been amusing myself 
with a “ metaphysical exercitation or logomachy ” 
(may I remark incidentally that these are not 
quite convertible terms ?), when, to the best of my 
belief, I have been trying to expose a process 
of mystification, based upon, the use of scientific 
language by writers who exhibit no sign of 
scientific training, of accurate scientific knowledge, 
or of clear ideas respecting the philosophy of 
science, which is doing very serious harm to the 
public. Naturally enough, they take the lion’s 
skin of scientific phraseology for evidence that the 
voice which issues from beneath it is the voice of 
science, and I desire to relieve them from the 
consequences of their error. 

The Duke of Argyll asks, apparently with 
sorrow that it should be his duty to subject me to 
reproof— 

What shall we say of a philosophy which confounds the organic 
with the inorganic, and, refusing to take note of a difference so 


118 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


profound, assumes to explain under one common abstraction, 
the movements due to gravitation and the movements due to the 
mind of man ? 

To which I may fitly reply by another question : 
What shall we say to a controversialist who 
attributes to the subject of his attack opinions 
which are notoriously not his; and expresses 
himself in such a manner that it is obvious he is 
unacquainted with even the rudiments of that 
knowledge which is necessary to the discussion 
into which he has rushed ? 

What line of my writing can the Duke of Argyll 
produce which confounds the organic with the in¬ 
organic ? 

As to the latter half of the paragraph, T have 
to confess a doubt whether it has any definite 
meaning. But I imagine that the Duke is alluding 
to my assertion that the law of gravitation is nowise 
“ suspended ” or “ defied ” when a man lifts his 
arm; but that, under such circumstances, part of 
the store of energy in the universe operates on the 
arm at a mechanical advantage as against the 
operation of another part. I was simple enough 
to think that no one who had as much knowledge 
of physiology as is to be found in an elementary 
primer, or who had ever heard of the greatest 
physical generalisation of modern times—the 
doctrine of the conservation of energy—would 
dream of doubting my statement; and I was 
further simple enough to think that no one who 


Ill 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


119 


lacked these qualifications would feel tempted to 
charge me with error. It appears that my sim¬ 
plicity is greater than my powers of imagination. 

The Duke of Argyll may not be aware of the 
fact, but it is nevertheless true, that when a man’s 
arm is raised, in sequence to that state of con¬ 
sciousness we call a volition, the volition is not the 
immediate cause of the elevation of the arm. On 
the contrary, that operation is effected by a certain 
change of form, technically known as “ contraction ” 
in sundry masses of flesh, technically known as 
muscles, which are fixed to the bones of the 
shoulder in such a manner that, if these muscles 
contract, they must raise the arm. Now each of 
these muscles is a machine comparable, in a 
certain sense, to one of the donkey-engines of a 
steamship, but more complete, inasmuch as the 
source of its ability to change its form, or contract, 
lies within itself. Every time that, by contracting, 
the muscle does work, such as that involved in 
raising the arm, more or less of the material which 
it contains is used up, just as more or less of the 
fuel of a steam-engine is used up, when it does 
work. And I do not think, there is a doubt in the 
mind of any competent physicist, or physiologist, 
that the work done in lifting the weight of the arm 
is the mechanical equivalent of a certain proportion 
of the energy set free by the molecular changes 
which take place in the muscle. It is further a 
tolerably well-based belief that this, and all other 


120 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


forms of energy, are mutually convertible; and, 
therefore, that they all come under that general 
law or statement of the order of facts, called 
the conservation of energy. And, as that certainly 
is an abstraction, so the view which the Duke of 
Argyll thinks so extremely absurd is really one of 
the commonplaces of physiology. But this Review 
is hardly an appropriate place for giving instruction 
in the elements of that science, and I content 
myself with recommending the Duke of Argyll to 
devote some study to Book II. chap. v. section 4 
of my friend Dr. Foster’s excellent text-book of 
Physiology (1st edition, 1877, p. 321), which begins 
thus:— 

Broadly speaking, tlie animal body is a machine for converting 
potential into actual energy. The potential energy is supplied 
by the food ; this the metabolism of the body converts into the 
actual energy of heat and mechanical labour. 

There is no more difficult problem in the world 
than that of the relation of the state of conscious¬ 
ness, termed volition, to the mechanical work 
which frequently follows upon it. But no one can 
even comprehend the nature of the problem, who 
has not carefully studied the long series of modes 
of motion which, without a break, connect the 
energy which does that work with the general 
store of energy. The ultimate form of the 
problem is this: Have we any reason to believe 
that a feeling, or state of consciousness, is capable 


Ill 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


121 


of directly affecting tiie motion of even the small¬ 
est conceivable molecule of matter ? Is such a 
thing even conceivable ? If we answer these 
questions in the negative, it follows that volition 
may be a sign, but cannot be a cause, of bodily 
motion. If we answer them in the affirmative, then 
states of consciousness become undistinguishable 
from material things ; for it is the essential nature 
of matter to be the vehicle or substratum of 
mechanical energy. 

There is nothing new in all this. I have 
merely put into modern language the issue 
raised by Descartes more than two centuries ago. 
The philosophies of the Occasionalists, of Spinoza, 
of Malebranche, of modern idealism and modern 
materialism, have all grown out of the contro¬ 
versies which Cartesianism evoked. Of all this 
the pseudo-science of the present time appears to 
be unconscious; otherwise it would hardly content 
itself with “ making het again ” the pseudo-science 
of the past. 

In the course of these observations I have 
already had occasion to express my appreciation 
of the copious and perfervid eloquence which 
enriches the Duke of Argyll’s pages. I am 
almost ashamed that a constitutional insensibility 
to the Sirenian charms of rhetoric has permitted 
me in wandering through these flowery meads, to 
be attracted, almost exclusively, to the bare 
places of fallacy and the stony grounds of deficient 


122 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


information, which are disguised, though not con¬ 
cealed, by these floral decorations. But, in his 
concluding sentences, the Duke soars into a 
Tyrtaean strain which roused even my dull soul. 

It was high time, indeed, that some revolt should be raised 
against that Reign of Terror which had come to be established 
in the scientific world under the abuse of a great name Pro¬ 
fessor Huxley has not joined this revolt openly, for as yet, in¬ 
deed, it is only beginning to raise its head. But more than once 
—and very lately—he has uttered a warning voice against the 
shallow dogmatism that has provoked it. The time is coming 
when that revolt will be carried further. Higher interpretations 
will be established. Unless I am much mistaken, they are 
already coming in sight (p. 339). 

I have been living very much out of the world 
for the last two or three years, and when I read 
this denunciatory outburst, as of one filled with 
the spirit of prophecy, I said to myself, “ Mercy 
upon us, what has happened ? Can it be that X. 
and Y. (it would be w T rong to mention the names 
of the vigorous young friends which occurred to 
me) are playing Danton and Robespierre; and 
that a guillotine is erected in the courtyard of 
Burlington House for the benefit of all anti- 
Darwinian Fellows of the Royal Society ? Where 
are the secret conspirators against this tyranny, 
whom I am supposed to favour, and yet not have 
the courage to join openly ? And to think of my 
poor oppressed friend, Mr. Herbert Spencer, ‘ com¬ 
pelled to speak with bated breath’ (p. 338 ) 
certainly for the first time in my thirty-odd years’ 


Ill SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 123 

acquaintance with him ! ” My alarm and horror 
at the supposition that, while I had been fiddling 
(or at any rate physicking), my beloved Rome 
had been burning, in this fashion, may be 
imagined. 

Iam sure the Duke of Argyll will be glad to 
hear that the anxiety he created was of extremely 
short duration. It is my privilege to have access 
to the best sources of information, and nobody in 
the scientific world can tell me anything about 
either the “Reign of Terror” or “the Revolt.” 
In fact, the scientific world laughs most inde¬ 
corously at the notion of the existence of either; 
and some are so lost to the sense of the scientific 
dignity, that they descend to the use of trans¬ 
atlantic slang, and call it a “ bogus scare.” As to 
my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer, I have every 
reason to know that, in the “ Factors of Organic 
Evolution,” he has said exactly what was in his 
mind, without any particular deference to the 
opinions of the person whom he is pleased to 
regard as his most dangerous critic and Devil’s 
Advocate-General, and still less of any one else. 

I do not know whether the Duke of Argyll 
pictures himself as the Tallien of this imaginary 
revolt against a no less imaginary Reign of Terror. 
But if so, I most respectfully but firmly decline 
to join his forces. It is only a few weeks since I 
happened to read over again the first article 
which I ever wrote (now twenty-seven years ago) 


124 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


III 


on the “ Origin of Species,” and I found nothing 
that I wished to modify in the opinions that are 
there expressed, though the subsequent vast 
accumulation of evidence in favour of Mr. Dar¬ 
win’s views would give me much to add. As is 
the case with all new doctrines, so with that of 
Evolution, the enthusiasm of advocates has some¬ 
times tended to degenerate into fanaticism; and 
mere speculation has, at times, threatened to 
shoot beyond its legitimate bounds. I have 
occasionally thought it wise to warn the more 
adventurous spirits among us against these 
dangers, in sufficiently plain language; and I 
have sometimes jestingly said that I expected, 
if I lived long enough, to be looked on as a 
reactionary by some of my more ardent friends. 
But nothing short of midsummer madness can 
account for the fiction that I am waiting till it is 
safe to join openly a revolt, hatched by some 
person or persons unknown, against an intellectual 
movement with which I am in the most entire 
and hearty sympathy. It is a great many years 
since, at the outset of my career, I had to think 
seriously what life had to offer that was worth 
having. I came to the conclusion that the chief 
good, for me, was freedom to learn, think, and say 
what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on 
that conviction, and have availed myself of the 
“ rara temporum felicitas ubi sentire quae velis, et 
quae sentias dicere licet,” which is now enjoyable, 


Ill 


SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE 


125 


to the best of my ability; and though strongly, 
and perhaps wisely, warned that I should prob¬ 
ably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with 
the results of the line of action I have adopted. 

My career is at an end. I have 

Warmed botli hands before the fire of life ; 

and nothing is left me, before I depart, but to 
help, or at any rate to abstain from hindering, 
the younger generation of men of science in doing 
better service to the cause we have at heart than 
I have been able to render. 

And yet, forsooth, I am supposed to be waiting 
for the signal of “ revolt,” which some fiery spirits 
among these young men are to raise before I dare 
express my real opinions concerning questions 
about which we older men had to fight, in the 
teeth of fierce public opposition and obloquy—of 
something which might almost justify even the 
grandiloquent epithet of a Reign of Terror— 
before our excellent successors had left school. 

It would appear that the spirit of pseudo¬ 
science has impregnated even the imagination of 
the Duke of Argyll. The scientific imagination 
always restrains itself within the limits of prob¬ 
ability 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 

[1887] 

If there is any truth in the old adage that a 
burnt child dreads the fire, I ought to be very 
loath to touch a sermon, while the memory of what 
befell me on a recent occasion, possibly not yet 
forgotten by the readers of the Nineteenth Century , 
is uneffaced. But I suppose that even the distin¬ 
guished censor of that unheard-of audacity to 
which not even the newspaper report of a sermon 
is sacred, can hardly regard a man of science as 
either indelicate or presumptuous, if he ventures 
to offer some comments upon three discourses, 
specially addressed to the great assemblage of 
men of science which recently gathered at 
Manchester, by three bishops of the State Church. 
On my return to England not long ago, I found a 
pamphlet 1 containing a version, which I presume 

1 The Advance of Science. Three sermons preached in Man¬ 
chester Cathedral on Sunday, September 4, 1887, during the 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


127 


to be authorised, of these sermons, among the 
huge mass of letters and papers which had 
accumulated during two months’ absence; and I 
have read them not only with attentive interest, 
but with a feeling of satisfaction which is quite 
new to me as a result of hearing, or reading, 
sermons. These excellent discourses, in fact, 
appear to me to signalise a new departure in the 
course adopted by theology towards science, and 
to indicate the possibility of bringing about an 
honourable modus vivendi between the two. How 
far the three bishops speak as accredited repre¬ 
sentatives of the Church is a question to be 
considered by and by. Most assuredly, I am not 
authorised to represent any one but myself. But 
I suppose that there must be a good many peoiile 
in the Church of the bishops’ way of thinking; 
and I have reason to believe that, in the ranks of 
science, there are a good many persons who, more 
or less, share my views. And it is to these sensible 
people on both sides, as the bishops and I must 
needs think those who agree with us, that my 
present observations are addressed. They will 
probably be astonished to learn how insignificant, 
in principle, their differences are. 

It is impossible to read the discourses of the 
three prelates without being impressed by the 

meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science, by the Bishop of Carlisle, the Bishop of Bedford, and 
the Bishop of Manchester. 

124 


128 


AN EPISCOPAL TKILOGY 


IV 


knowledge which they display, and by the spirit 
of equity, I might say of generosity, towards 
science which pervades them. There is no trace 
of that tacit or open assumption that the rejection 
of theological dogmas, on scientific grounds, is due 
to moral perversity, which is the ordinary note of 
ecclesiastical homilies on this subject, and which 
makes them look so supremely silly to men whose 
lives have been spent in wrestling with these 
questions. There is no attempt to hide away real 
stumbling-blocks under rhetorical stucco; no resort 
to the tu quoque device of setting scientific blun¬ 
ders against theological errors; no suggestion that 
an honest man may keep contradictory beliefs in 
separate pockets of his brain ; no question that the 
method of scientific investigation is valid, what¬ 
ever the results to which it may lead; and that the 
search after truth, and truth only, ennobles the 
searcher and leaves no doubt that his life, at any 
rate, is worth living. The Bishop of Carlisle 
declares himself pledged to the belief that “ the 
advancement of science, the progress of human 
knowledge, is in itself a worthy aim of the greatest 
effort of the greatest minds.” 

How often was it my fate, a quarter of a century 
ago, to see the whole artillery of the pulpit brought 
to bear upon the doctrine of evolution and its sup¬ 
porters S Any one unaccustomed to the amenities 
of ecclesiastical controversy would have thought 
we were too wicked to be permitted to live. But 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


129 


let us hear the Bishop of Bedford. After a 
perfectly frank statement of the doctrine of 
evolution and some of its obvious consequences, 
that learned prelate pleads, with all earnestness, 
against 

a hasty denunciation of what may be proved to have at least 
some elements of truth in it, a contemptuous rejection of theories 
which we on ay some day learn to accept as freely and with as 
little sense of inconsistency with God’s word as we now accept 
the theory of the earth’s motion round the sun, or the long 
duration of the geological epochs (p. 28). 

I do not see that the most convinced evolutionist 
could ask any one, whether cleric or layman, to say 
more than this; in fact, I do not think that any 
one has a right to say more, with respect to any 
question about which two opinions can be held, than 
that his mind is perfectly open to the force of 
evidence. 

There is another portion of the Bishop of Bed¬ 
ford’s sermon which I think will be warmly appre¬ 
ciated by all honest and clear-headed men. He 
repudiates the views of those who say that theology 
and science 

occupy wholly different spheres, and need in no way intermeddle 
with each other. They revolve, as it were, in different planes, 
and so never meet. Thus we may pursue scientific studies with 
the utmost freedom and, at the same time, may pay the most 
reverent regard to theology, having no fears of collision, because 
allowing no points of contact (p. 29). 

Surely every unsophisticated mind will heartily 


130 


AX EPISCOPAL TUI LOGY 


IV 


concur with the Bishop’s remark upon this con¬ 
venient refuge for the descendants of Mr. Facing- 
both-ways. “ I have never been able to under¬ 
stand this position, though I have often seen it 
assumed.” Nor can any demurrer be sustained 
when the Bishop proceeds to point out that there 
are, and must he, various points of contact between 
theological and natural science, and therefore that 
it is foolish to ignore or deny the existence of as 
many dangers of collision. 

Finally, the Bishop of Manchester freely admits 
the force of the objections which have been raised, 
on scientific grounds, to prayer, and attempts to 
turn them by arguing that the proper objects of 
prayer are not physical but spiritual. He tells us 
that natural accidents and moral misfortunes are 
not to be taken for moral judgments of God; he 
admits the propriety of the application of scientific 
methods to the investigation of the origin and 
growth of religions; and he is as ready to recognise 
the process of evolution there, as in the physical 
world. Mark the following striking passage:— 

And how utterly all the common objections to Divine revela¬ 
tion vanish away when they are set in the light of this theory of 
a spiritual progression. Are we reminded that there prevailed 
in those earlier days, views of the nature of God and man, of 
human life and Divine Providence, which we now find to bo 
untenable ? That, we answer, is precisely what the theory of 
development presupposes. If early views of religion and mor¬ 
ality had not been imperfect, where had been the development ? 
If symbolical visions and mythical creations had found no place 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


131 


in the early Oriental expression of Divine truth, where had been 
the development ? The sufficient answer to ninety-nine out of a 
hundred ot the ordinary objections to the Bible, as the record of 
a divine education of our race, is asked in that one word— 
development. And to what are we indebted for that potent 
word, which, as with the wand of a magician, has at the same 
moment so completely transformed our knowledge and dispelled 
our difficulties ? To modern science, resolutely pursuing its 
search for truth in spite of popular obloquy and—alas ! that one 
should have to say it—in spite too often of theological denuncia¬ 
tion (p. 53). 


Apart from its general importance, I read this 
remarkable statement with the more pleasure, 
since, however imperfectly I may have endeavoured 
to illustrate the evolution of theology in a paper 
published in the Nineteenth Century last year, 1 it 
seems to me that in principle, at any rate, I may 
hereafter claim high theological sanction for the 
views there set forth. 

If theologians are henceforward prepared to re¬ 
cognise the authority of secular science in the man¬ 
ner and to the extent indicated in the Manchester 
trilogy; if the distinguished prelates who offer 
these terms are really plenipotentiaries, then, so 
far as I may presume to speak on such a matter, 
there will be no difficulty about concluding a per¬ 
petual treaty of peace, and indeed of alliance, 
between the high contracting powers, whose 
history has hitherto been little more than a record 
of continual warfare. But if the great Chancellor’s 
1 Reprinted in Yol. IY. of this collection. 


132 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IV 


maxim, “Do ut des,” is to form tlie basis of 
negotiation, I am afraid that secular science will 
be ruined; for it seems to me that theology, under 
the generous impulse of a sudden conversion, has 
given all that she hath; and indeed, on one point, 
has surrendered more than can reasonably be asked. 

I suppose I must be prepared to face the reproach 
which attaches to those who criticise a gift, if I 
venture to observe that I do not think that the 
Bishop of Manchester need have been so much 
alarmed, as he evidently has been, by the objections 
which have often been raised to prayer, on the 
ground that a belief in the efficacy of prayer is 
inconsistent with a belief in the constancy of the 
order of nature. 

The Bishop appears to admit that there is an 
antagonism between the “ regular economy of 
nature ” and the “ regular economy of prayer ” 
(p. 39), and that “prayers for the interruption of 
God’s natural order ” are of “ doubtful validity ” 
(p. 42). It appears to me that the Bishop’s 
difficulty simply adds another example to those 
which 1 have several times insisted upon in the 
pages of this Review and elsewhere, of the mischief 
which has been done, and is being done, by a mis¬ 
taken apprehension of the real meaning of “ natural 
order ” and “ law of nature.” 

May I, therefore, be permitted to repeat, once 
more, that the statements denoted by these terms 
have no greater value or cogency than such as may 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


133 


attach to generalisations from experience of the 
past, and to expectations for the future based upon 
that experience ? Nobody can presume to sav 
what the order of nature must be ; all that the 
widest experience (even if it extended over all 
past time and through all space) that events had 
happened in a certain way could justify, would be a 
proportionally strong expectation that events will 
go on so happening, and the demand for a propor¬ 
tional strength of evidence in favour of any asser¬ 
tion that they had happened otherwise. 

It is this weighty consideration, the truth of 
which every one who is capable of logical thought 
must surely admit, which knocks the bottom out of 
all a priori objections either to ordinary “ miracles ” 
or to the efficacy of prayer, in so far as the latter 
implies the miraculous intervention of a higher 
power. No one is entitled to say a priori that any 
given so-called miraculous event is impossible ; and 
no one is entitled to say a priori that prayer for 
some change in the ordinary course of nature can¬ 
not possibly avail. 

The supposition that there is any inconsistency 
between the acceptance of the constancy of natural 
order and a belief in the efficacy of prayer, is the 
more unaccountable as it is obviously contradicted 
by analogies furnished by everyday experience. 
The belief in the efficacy of prayer depends upon 
the assumption that there is somebody, somewhere, 
who is strong enough to deal with the earth and 
its contents as men deal with the things and events 


134 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IV 


which they are strong enough to modify or control; 
and who is capable of being moved by appeals 
such as men make to one another. This belief 
does not even involve theism; for our earth is an 
insignificant particle of the solar system, while the 
solar system is hardly worth speaking of in relation 
to the All; and, for anything that can be proved 
to the contrary, there may be beings endowed 
with full powers over our system, yet, practically, 
as insignificant as ourselves in relation to the 
universe. If any one pleases, therefore, to give un¬ 
restrained liberty to his fancy, he may plead 
analogy in favour of the dream that there may be, 
somewhere, a finite being, or beings, who can play 
with the solar system as a child plays with a toy ; 
and that such being may be willing to do anything 
which he is properly supplicated to do. For we 
are not justified in saying that it is impossible for 
beings having the nature of men, only vastly more 
powerful, to exist; and if they do exist, they may 
act as and when we ask them to do so, just as our 
brother men act. As a matter of fact, the great 
mass of the human race has believed, and still 
believes, in such beings, under the various names 
of fairies, gnomes, angels, and demons. Certainly 
I do not lack faith in the constancy of natural 
order. But I am not less convinced that if I were 
to ask the Bishop of Manchester to do me a kind¬ 
ness which lay within his power, he would do it. 
And I am unable to see that his action on my 
request involves any violation of the order of 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


135 


nature. On the contrary, as I have not the 
honour to know the Bishop personally, my action 
would he based upon my faith in that “ law of 
nature/’ or generalisation from experience, which 
tells me that, as a rule, men who occupy the 
Bishop’s position are kindly and courteous. How 
is the case altered if my request is preferred to 
some imaginary superior being, or to the Most 
High being, who, by the supposition, is able to 
arrest disease, or make the sun stand still in the 
heavens, just as easily as I can stop my watch, or 
make it indicate any hour that pleases me ? 

I repeat that it is not upon any a priori con¬ 
siderations that objections, either to the supposed 
efficacy of prayer in modifying the course of events, 
or to the supposed occurrence of miracles, can be 
scientifically based. The real objection, and, to 
my mind, the fatal objection, to both these sup¬ 
positions, is the inadequacy of the evidence to 
prove any given case of such occurrences which 
has been adduced. It is a canon of common 
sense, to say nothing of science, that the more 
improbable a supposed occurrence, the more 
cogent ought to be the evidence in its favour. I 
have looked somewhat carefully into the subject, 
and I am unable to find in the records of any 
miraculous event evidence which even approxi¬ 
mates to the fulfilment of this requirement. 

But, in the case of prayer, the Bishop points out 
a most just and necessary distinction between its 


136 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IV 


effect on the course of nature, outside ourselves, 
and its effect within the region of the supplicator’s 
mind. 

It is a “ law of nature,” verifiable b j everyday 
experience, that our already formed conviotions, 
our strong desires, our intent occupation with 
particular ideas, modify our mental operations to 
a most marvellous extent, and produce enduring 
changes in the direction and in the intensity of 
our intellectual and moral activities. Men can 
intoxicate themselves with ideas as effectually as 
with alcohol or with bang, and produce, by dint 
of intense thinking, mental conditions hardly 
distinguishable from monomania. Demoniac pos¬ 
session is mythical; but the faculty of being 
possessed, more or less completely, by an idea 
is probably the fundamental condition of what 
is called genius, whether it show itself in the , 
saint, the artist, or the man of science. One 
calls it faith, another calls it inspiration, a third 
calls it insight; but the “ intending of the mind,” 
to borrow Newton’s well-known phrase, the con¬ 
centration of all the rays of intellectual energy 
on some one point, until it glows and colours the 
whole cast of thought with its peculiar light, is 
common to all. 

I take it that the Bishop of Manchester has 
psychological science with him when he insists 
upon the subjective efficacy of prayer in faith, and 
on the seemingly miraculous effects which such 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


137 


“ intending of the mind ” upon religious and 
moral ideals may have upon character and 
happiness. Scientific faith, at present, takes it 
no further than the prayer which Ajax offered; 
but that petition is continually granted. 

Whatever points of detail may yet remain open 
for discussion, however, I repeat the opinion I 
have already expressed, that the Manchester 
sermons concede all that science, has an in¬ 
disputable right, or any pressing need, to ask, and 
that not grudgingly but generously; and, if the 
three bishops of 1887 carry the Church with them, 
I think they will have as good title to the 
permanent gratitude of posterity as the famous 
seven who went to the Tower in defence of the 
Church two hundred years ago. 

Will their brethren follow their just and 
prudent guidance ? I have no such acquaintance 
with the currents of ecclesiastical opinion as would 
justify me in even hazarding a guess on such 
a difficult topic. But some recent omens are 
hardly favourable. There seems to be an im¬ 
pression abroad—I do not desire to give any 
countenance to it—that I am fond of reading 
sermons. From time to time, unknown corre¬ 
spondents—some apparently animated by the 
charitable desire to promote my conversion, and 
others unmistakably anxious to spur me to the 
expression of wrathful antagonism—favour me with 
reports or copies of such productions. 


138 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IV 


I found one of the latter category among the 
accumulated arrears to which I have already 
referred. 

It is a full, and apparently accurate, report of a 
discourse by a person of no less ecclesiastical rank 
than the three authors of the sermons I have 
hitherto been considering; but who he is, and 
where or when the sermon was preached, are 
secrets which wild horses shall not tear from 
me, lest I fall again under high censure for 
attacking a clergyman. Only if the editor of this 
Review thinks it his duty to have independent 
evidence that the sermon has a real existence, will 
I, in the strictest confidence, communicate it to 
him. 

The preacher, in this case, is of a very different 
mind from the three bishops—and this mind is 
different in quality, different in spirit, and different 
in contents. He discourses on the a 'priori 
objections to miracles, apparently without being 
aware, in spite of all the discussions of the last 
seven or eight years, that he is doing battle with 
a shadow. 

I trust I do not misrepresent the Bishop of 
Manchester in saying that the essence of his 
remarkable discourse is the insistence upon the 
“ supreme importance of the purely spiritual in 
our faith,” and of the relative, if not absolute, 
insignificance of aught else. He obviously per¬ 
ceives the bearing of his arguments against the 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


139 


alterability of the course of outward nature by 
prayer, on the question of miracles in general; 
lor he is careful to say that “ the possibility of 
miracles, of a rare and unusual transcendence of 
the world order is not here in question ” (p. 38). 
It may be permitted me to suppose, however, that, 
if miracles were in question, the speaker who 
warns us “that we must look for the heart of the 
absolute religion in that part of it which prescribes 
our moral and religious relations ” (p. 46) would 
not be disposed to advise those who had found the 
heart of Christianity to take much thought about 
its miraculous integument. 

My anonymous sermon will have nothing to do 
with such notions as these, and its preacher is not 
too polite, to say nothing of charitable, towards 
those who entertain them. 

Scientific men, therefore, are perfectly right in asserting that 
Christianity rests on miracles. If miracles never happened, 
Christianity, in any sense which is not a mockery, which does 
not make the term of none effect, has no reality. I dwell on 
this because there is now an effort making to get up a non-mir- 
aculous, invertebrate Christianity, which may escape the ban 
of science. And I would warn you very distinctly against this 
new contrivance. Christianity is essentially miraculous, and 
falls to the ground if miracles be impossible. 

Well, warning for warning. I venture to warn 
this preacher and those who, with him, persist in 
identifying Christianity with the miraculous, that 
such forms of Christianity are not only doomed to 
fall to the ground; but that, within the last 


140 


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half century, they have been driving that way with 
continually accelerated velocity. 

The so-called religious world is given to a strange 
delusion. It fondly imagines that it possesses the 
monopoly of serious and constant reflection upon 
the terrible problems of existence ; and that those 
who cannot accept its shibboleths are either mere 
Gallios, caring for none of these things, or 
libertines desiring to escape from the restraints of 
morality. It does not appear to have entered the 
imaginations of these people that, outside their 
pale and firmly resolved never to enter it, there 
are thousands of men, certainly not their inferiors 
in character, capacity, or knowledge of the 
questions at issue, who estimate those purely 
spiritual elements of the Christian faith of which 
the Bishop of Manchester speaks as highly as the 
Bishop does ; but who will have nothing to do with 
the Christian Churches, because in their appre¬ 
hension and for them, the profession of belief in 
the miraculous, on the evidence offered, would be 
simply immoral. 

So far as my experience goes, men of science are 
neither better nor worse than the rest of the 
world. Occupation wflth the endlessly great parts 
of the ^universe does not necessarily involve 
greatness of character, nor does microscopic study 
of the infinitely little always produce humility. 
We have our full share of original sin; need, 
greed, and vainglory beset us as they do other 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


141 


mortals; and our progress is, for the most past, 
like that of a tacking ship, the resultant of opposite 
divergencies from the straight path. But, for all 
that, there is one moral benefit which the pursuit 
of science unquestionably bestows. It keeps the 
estimate of the value of evidence up to the proper 
mark; and we are constantly receiving lessons, 
and sometimes very sharp ones, on the nature of 
proof. Men of science will always act up to their 
standard of veracity, when mankind in general 
leave off sinning; but that standard appears to me 
to be higher among them than in any other class 
of the community. 

I do not know any body of scientific men who 
could be got to listen without the strongest ex¬ 
pressions of disgusted repudiation to the exposition 
of a pretended scientific discovery, which had no 
better evidence to show for itself than the story 
of the devils entering a herd of swine, or of the 
fig-tree that was blasted for bearing uo figs when 
“ it was not the season of figs.” Whether such 
events are possible or impossible, no man can say; 
but scientific ethics can and does declare that the 
profession of belief in them, on the evidence of 
documents of unknown date and of unknown 
authorship, is immoral. Theological apologists 
who insist that morality will vanish if their 
dogmas are exploded, would do well to consider 
the fact that, in the matter of intellectual veracity, 
science is already a long way ahead cf the 


142 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IV 


Churches; and that, in this particular, it is 
exerting an educational influence on mankind of 
which the Churches have shown themselves 
utterly incapable. 

Undoubtedly that varying compound of some 
of the best and some of the worst elements of 
Paganism and Judaism, moulded in practice by 
the innate character of certain people of the 
Western world, which, since the second century, 
has assumed to itself the title of orthodox 
Christianity, “ rests on miracles ” and falls to the 
ground, not “if miracles be impossible,” but if 
those to which it is committed prove themselves 
unable to fulfil the conditions of honest belief. 
That this Christianity is doomed to fall is, to my 
mind, beyond a doubt; but its fall will be neither 
sudden nor speedy. The Church, with all the aid 
lent it by the secular arm, took many centuries to 
extirpate the open practice of pagan idolatry 
within its own fold; and those who have travelled 
in southern Europe will be aware that it has not 
extirpated the essence of such idolatry even yet. 
Mutato nomine , it is probable that there is as much 
sheer fetichism among the Roman populace now 
as there was eighteen hundred years ago; and if 
Marcus Antoninus could descend from his horse and 
ascend the steps of the Ara Coeli church about 
Twelfth Day, the only thing that need strike him 
would be the extremely contemptible character of 
the modern idols as works of art. 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


143 


Science will certainly neither ask for, nor 
receive, the aid of the secular arm. It will trust 
to the much better and more powerful help of that 
education in scientific truth and in the morals of 
assent, which is rendered as indispensable, as it is 
inevitable, by the permeation of practical life with 
the products and ideas of science. But no one 
who considers the present state of even the most 
developed countries can doubt that the scientific 
light that has come into the world will have to 
shine in the midst of darkness for a long time. 
The urban populations, driven into contact with 
science by trade and manufacture, will more and 
more receive it, while the pagani will lag behind. 
Let us hope that no Julian may arise among them 
to head a forlorn hope against the inevitable. 
Whatever happens, science may bide her time in 
patience and in confidence. 

But to return to my “Anonymous.” I am 
afraid that if he represents any great party in the 
Church, the spirit of justice and reasonableness 
which animates the three bishops has as slender a 
chance of being imitated, on a large scale, as their 
common sense and their courtesy. For, not con¬ 
tented with misrepresenting science on its specu¬ 
lative side, “ Anonymous ” attacks its morality. 

For two whole years, investigations and conclusions which 
would upset the theories of Darwin on the formation of coral 
islands were actually suppressed, and that by the advice even of 
those who accepted them, for fear of upsetting the faith and dis• 
125 


144 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IV 


turbing the judgment formed by the multitude on the scientific 
character—the infallibility—of the greed master 1 

So far as I know anything about the matters 
which are here referred to, the part of this passage 
which I have italicised is absolutely untrue. I 
believe that I am intimately acquainted with all 
Mr. Darwin’s immediate scientific friends: and I 
say that no one of them, nor any other man of 
science known to me, ever could, or would, have 
given such advice to any one—if for no other 
reason than that, with the example of the most 
candid and patient listener to objections that ever 
lived fresh in their memories, they could not so 
grossly have at once violated their highest duty 
and dishonoured their friend. 

The charge thus brought by "Anonymous” 
affects the honour and the probity of men of 
science; if it is true, we have forfeited all claim 
to the confidence of the general public. In 
my belief it is utterly false, and its real effect will 
be to discredit those who are responsible for it. 
As is the way with slanders, it has grown by 
repetition. “ Anonymous ” is responsible for the 
peculiarly offensive form which it has taken in his 
hands; but he is not responsible for originating 
it. He has evidently been inspired by an article 
entitled “ A Great Lesson,” published in the Sep¬ 
tember number of this Review. Truly it is “ a 
great lesson,” but not quite in the sense intended 
by the giver thereofi 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


145 


In the course of his doubtless well-meant ad¬ 
monitions, the Duke of Argyll commits himself 
to a greater number of statements which are de¬ 
monstrably incorrect and which any one who 
ventured to write upon the subject ought to have 
known to be incorrect, than I have ever seen 
gathered together in so small a space. 

I submit a gathering from the rich store for the 
appreciation of the public. 

First:— 

Mr. Murray’s new explanation of the structure of coral-reefs 
and islands was communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh 
in 1880, and supported with such a weight of facts and such a 
close texture of reasoning, that no serious reply has ever been 
attempted (p. 305). 


“No serious reply has ever been attempted ” ! I 
suppose that the Duke of Argyll may have heard 
of Professor Dana, whose years of labour devoted 
to corals and coral-reefs when he was naturalist 
of the American expedition under Commodore 
Wilkes, more than forty years ago, have ever since 
caused him to be recognised as an authority of the 
first rank on such subjects. Now does his Grace 
know, or does he not know, that, in the year 18£5, 
Professor Dana published an elaborate paper “ On 
the Origin of Coral-Reefs and Islands,” in which, 
after referring to a Presidential Address by the 
Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain 
and Ireland delivered in 1883, in which special 


146 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IV 


attention is directed to Mr. Murray’s views Pro- 
fessor Dana says :— 

The existing state of doubt on the question has led the writer 
to reconsider the earlier and later facts, and in the follow ing 
pages he gives his results. 

Professor Dana then devotes many pages of his 
very <e serious reply ” to a most admirable and 
weighty criticism of the objections which have at 
various times been raised to Mr. Darwin s doctrine, 
by Professor Semper, by Dr. Rein, and finally by 
Mr. Murray, and he states his final judgment as 
follows:— 

With the theory of abrasion and solution incompetent, ail the 
hypotheses of objectors to Darwin’s theory are alike weak ; for 
all have made these processes their chief reliance, whether ap¬ 
pealing to a calcareous, or a volcanic, or a mountain-peak base¬ 
ment for. the structure. The subsidence which the Darwinian 
theory requires has not been opposed by the mention of any fact 
at variance with it, nor by setting aside Darwin’s arguments in 
its favour ; and it has found new support in the facts from the 
“ Challenger’s” soundings off Tahiti, that had been put in array 
against it, and strong corroboration in the facts from the West 
Indies. 

Darwin’s theory, therefore, remains as the theory that accounts 
for the origin of. reefs and islands. 1 

Be it understood that I express no opinion on 
the controverted points. I doubt if there are ten 
living men who, having a practical knowledge of 
what a coral-reef is, have endeavoured to master 
the very difficult biological and geological prob¬ 
lems involved in their study. I happen to have 

1 American Journal of Science, 1885, p. 190. 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


147 


spent the best part of three years among coral- 
reefs and to have made that attempt; and, when 
Mr. Murray’s work appeared, I said to myself that 
until I had two or three months to give to the 
renewed study of the subject in all its bearings, I 
must be content to remain in a condition of sus¬ 
pended judgment. In the meanwhile, the man 
who would be voted by common acclamation as the 
most competent person now living to act as umpire, 
has delivered the verdict I have quoted; and, to 
go no further, has fully justified the hesitation I 
and others may have felt about expressing an 
opinion. Under these circumstances, it seems to 
me to require a good deal of courage to say “no 
serious reply has ever been attempted ”; and to 
chide the men of science, in lofty tones, for their 
“reluctance to admit an error” which is not 
admitted; and for their “ slow and sulky acqui¬ 
escence” in a conclusion which they have the 
gravest warranty for suspecting. 

Second:— 

Darwin himself had lived to hear of the now solution, and, 
with that splendid candour which was eminent in him, his mind, 
though now grown old in his own early convictions, was at least 
ready to entertain it, and to confess that serious doubts had been 
awakened as to the truth of his famous theory (p. 305). 

I wish that Darwin’s splendid candour could 
be conveyed by some description of spiritual 
“ microbe ” to those who write about him. I am 
not aware that Mr. Darwin ever entertained 


148 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IV 


“serious doubts as to the truth of his famous 
theory”; and there is tolerably good evidence to 
the contrary. The second edition of his work, 
published in 1876, proves that he entertained no 
such doubts then; a letter to Professor Semper, 
whose objections, in some respects, forestalled 
those of Mr. Murray, dated October 2, 1879, ex- 
p esses his continued adherence to the opinion 
“that the atolls and barrier reefs in the middle 
of the Pacific and Indian Oceans indicate sub¬ 
sidence”; and the letter of my friend Professor 
Judd, printed at the end of this article (which 
I had perhaps better say Professor Judd had 
not seen) will prove that this opinion remained 
unaltered to the end of his life. 

Third:— 

. . . Darwin’s theory is a dream. It is not only unsound, 
but it is in many respects the reverse of truth. With all his con¬ 
scientiousness, with all his caution, with all his powers of ob¬ 
servation, Darwin in this matter fell into errors as profound as 
the abysses of the Pacific (p. 301). 

Really ? It seems to me that, under the circum¬ 
stances, it is pretty clear that these lines exhibit a 
lack of the qualities justly ascribed to Mr. Darwin, 
which plunges their author into a much deeper 
abyss, and one from which there is no hope of 
emergence. 

Fourth:— 

All the acclamations with which it was received were as the 
shouts of an ignorant mob (p. 301). 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


149 


But; surely it should be added that the Coryphaeus 
of this ignorant mob, the fugleman of the shouts, 
was one of the most accomplished naturalists and 
geologists now living—the American Dana—who, 
after years of independent study extending over 
numerous reefs in the Pacific, gave his hearty 
assent to Darwin’s views, and after all that had 
been said, deliberately reaffirmed that assent in 
the year 1885. 

Fifth:— 

The overthrow of Darwin’s speculation is only beginning to 
be known. It has been whispered for some time. The cherished 
dogma has been dropping very slowly out of sight (p. 301). 

Darwin’s speculation may be right or wrong, but I 
submit that that which has not happened cannot 
even begin to be known, except by those who have 
miraculous gifts to which we poor scientific people 
do not aspire. The overthrow of Darwin’s views 
may have been whispered by those who hoped for 
it; and they were perhaps wise in not raising 
their voices above a whisper. Incorrect state¬ 
ments, if made too loudly, are apt to bring about 
unpleasant consequences. 

Sixth:— 

Mr. Murray’s views, published in 1880, are 
said to have met with “slow and sulky ac¬ 
quiescence” (p. 305). I have proved that they 
cannot be said to have met with general acqui¬ 
escence of any sort, whether quick and cheerful, 
or slow and sulky; and if this assertion is meant 


150 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IV 


to convey the impression that Mr. Murray’s views 
have been ignored, that there has been a conspiracy 
of silence against them, it is utterly contrary to 
notorious fact. 

Professor Geikie’s well-known “ Textbook of 
Geology ” was published in 1882, and at pages 457- 
459 of that work there is a careful exposition of 
Mr. Murray’s views. Moreover Professor Geikie 
has specially advocated them on other occasions, 1 
notably in a long article on “ The Origin of Coral- 
Reefs,” published in two numbers of “ Nature ” for 
1883, and in a Presidential Address delivered in the 
same year. If, in so short a time after the publi¬ 
cation of his views, Mr. Murray could boast of a 
convert, so distinguished and influential as the 
Director of the Geological Survey, it seems to me 
that this wonderful conspiration de silence (which 
has about as much real existence as the Duke of 
Argyll’s other bogie, “ The Reign of Terror ”) must 
have ipso facto collapsed. I wish that, when I was 
a young man, my endeavours to upset some pre¬ 
valent errors had met with as speedy and effectual 
backing. 

Seventh:— 

. . . Mr. John Murray was strongly advised against the pub¬ 
lication of his views in derogation of Darwin’s long-accepted 

1 Professor Geikie, however, though a strong, is a fair and 
candid advocate. He says of Darwin’s theory, “That it may 
be possibly true, in some instances, may be readily granted/’' 
For Professor Geikie, then, it is not yet overthrown—still less a 
dream. 



IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


151 


theory of the coral islands, and was actually induced to delay it 
for two years. Yet the late Sir Wyville Thomson, who was at 
the head of the naturalists of the “ Challenger” expedition, was 
himself convinced by Mr. Murray’s reasoning (p. 307). 

Clearly, then, it could not be Mr. Murray’s official 
chief who gave him this advice. Who was it ? And 
what was the exact nature of the advice given ? 
Until we have some precise information on this 
head, I shall take leave to doubt whether this 
statement is more accurate than those which I 
have previously cited. 

Whether such advice was wise or foolish, just or 
immoral, depends entirely on the motive of the 
person who gave it. If he meant to suggest to 
Mr. Murray that it might be wise for a young and 
comparatively unknown man to walk warily, when 
he proposed to attack a generalisation based on 
many years’ labour of one undoubtedly com¬ 
petent person, and fortified by the independent 
results of the many years’ labour of another un¬ 
doubtedly competent person; and even, if neces¬ 
sary, to take two whole years in fortifying his 
position, I think that such advice would have been 
sagacious and kind. I suppose that there are few 
working men of science who have not kept their 
ideas to themselves, while gathering and sifting 
evidence, for a much longer period than two 
years. 

If, on the other hand, Mr. Murray was advised 
to delay the publication of his criticisms, simply to 


152 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IT 


save Mr. Darwin’s credit and to preserve some 
reputation for infallibility, whicli no one ever 
heard of, then I have no hesitation in declaring 
that his adviser was profoundly dishonest, as well 
as extremely foolish; and that, if he is a man of 
science, he has disgraced his calling. 

But, after all, this supposed scientific Achitophel 
has not yet made good the primary fact of his ex¬ 
istence. Until the needful proof is forthcoming, I 
think I am justified in suspending my judgment as 
to whether he is much more than an anti-scientific 
myth. I leave it to the Duke of Argyll to judge 
of the extent of the obligation under which, for 
his own sake, he may lie to produce the evidence 
on which his aspersions of the honour of scientific 
men are based. I cannot pretend that we are 
seriously disturbed by charges which every one 
who is acquainted with the truth of the matter 
knows to be ridiculous; but mud has a habit of 
staining if it lies too long, and it is as well to have 
it brushed off as soon as may be. 

So much for the “ Great Lesson.” It is followed 
by a “ Little Lesson,” apparently directed against 
my infallibility—a doctrine about which I should 
be inclined to paraphrase Wilkes’s remark to 
George the Third, when he declared that he, at 
any rate, was not a Wilkite. But I really should 
be glad to think that there are people who need 
the warning, because then it will be obvious that 
this raking up of an old story cannot have been 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


153 


suggested by a mere fanatical desire to damage 
men of science. I can but rejoice, then, that 
these misguided enthusiasts, whose faith in me 
has so far exceeded the bounds of reason, should 
be set right. But that “ want of finish ” in the 
matter of accuracy which so terribly mars the 
effect of the “ Great Lesson,” is no less conspicuous 
in the case of the “ Little Lesson,” and, instead of 
setting my too fervent disciples right, it will set 
them wrong. 

The Duke of Argyll, in telling the story of 
Bathybius, says that my mind was “ caught by this 
new and grand generalisation of the physical basis 
of life.” I never have been guilty of a reclamation 
about anything to my credit, and I do not mean 
to be; but if there is any blame going, I do not 
choose to be relegated to a subordinate place 
when I have a claim to the first. The responsi¬ 
bility for the first description and the naming of 
Bathybius is mine and mine only. The paper on 
“ Some Organisms living at great Depths in the 
Atlantic Ocean,” in which I drew attention to this 
substance, is to be found by the curious in the 
eighth volume of the “ Quarterly Journal of Micro¬ 
scopical Science,” and was published in the year 
1868. Whatever errors are contained in that 
paper are my own peculiar property; but neither 
at the meeting of the British Association in 1868, 
nor anywhere else, have I gone beyond what is 
there stated; except in so far that, at a long-sub- 


154 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


TV 


sequent meeting of the Association, being impor¬ 
tuned about the subject, I ventured to express 
somewhat emphatically, the wdsh that the thing 
was at the bottom of the sea. 

What is meant by my being caught by a 
generalisation about the physical basis of life I 
do not know; still less can I understand the as¬ 
sertion that Bathybius was accepted because of its 
supposed harmony with Darwin’s speculations. 
That which interested me in the matter was the 
apparent analogy of Bathybius with other well- 
known forms of lower life, such as the plasmodia 
of the Myxomycetes and the Rhizopods. Specu¬ 
lative hopes or fears had nothing to do with the 
matter; and if Bathybius were brought up alive 
from the bottom of the Atlantic to-morrow, the 
fact would not have the slightest bearing, that I 
can discern, upon Mr. Darwin’s speculations, or 
upon any of the disputed problems of biology. It 
would merely be one elementary organism the 
more added to the thousands already known. 

Up to this moment I was not aware of the 
universal favour w r ith which Bathybius was re¬ 
ceived. 1 Those simulators of an “ ignorant mob ” 
who, according to the Duke of Argyll, welcomed 

1 I find, moreover, tbit, I specially warned my readers against 
hasty judgment. After stating the facts of observation, I add, 
“I have, hitherto, said nothing about their meaning, as, in an 
inquiry so difficult and fraught with interest as this, it seems to 
me to be in the highest degree important to keep the questiom 
of fact and the questions of interpretation well axjart” (p. 210). 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


155 


Darwin’s theory of coral-reefs, made no demon¬ 
stration in my favour, unless his Grace includes 
Sir Wyville Thomson, Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Bessels, 
and Professor Haeckel under that head. On the 
contrary, a sagacious friend of mine, than whom 
there was no more competent judge, the late Mr. 
George Busk, was not to be converted; while, long 
before the “ Challenger ” work, Ehrenberg wrote 
to me very sceptically; and I fully expected that 
that eminent man would favour me with pretty 
sharp criticism. Unfortunately, he died shortly 
afterwards, and nothing from him, that I know of, 
appeared. When Sir W 7 yville Thomson wrote to 
me a brief account of the results obtained on board 
the“ Challenger” I sent this statement to “Nature,” 
in which journal it appeared the following week, 
without any further note or comment than was 
needful to explain the circumstances. In thus 
allowing judgment to go by default, I am afraid I 
showed a reckless and ungracious disregard for the 
feelings of the believers in my infallibility. No 
doubt I ought to have hedged and fenced and 
attenuated the effect of Sir Wyville Thomson’s 
brief note in every possible way. Or perhaps I 
ought to have suppressed the note altogether, on 
the ground that it was a mere ex parte statement. 
My excuse is that, notwithstanding a large 
and abiding faith in human folly, I did not know 
then, any more than I know now, that there 
was anybody foolish enough to be unaware that 


156 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IV 


the only people scientific or other, who never 
make mistakes are those who do nothing; or that 
anybody, for whose opinion I cared, would not rather 
see me commit ten blunders than try to hide one. 

Pending the production of further evidence, I 
hold that the existence of people who believe in 
the infallibility of men of science is as purely 
mythical as that of the evil counsellor who advised 
the withholding of the truth lest it should conflict 
with that belief. 

I venture to think, then, that the Duke of 
Argyll might have spared his “ Little Lesson ” as 
well as his “ Great Lesson’’ with advantage. The 
paternal authority who whips the child for sins 
he has not committed does not strengthen his 
moral influence—rather excites contempt and re¬ 
pugnance. And if, as would seem from this and 
former monitory allocutions which have been 
addressed to us, the Duke aspires to the position 
of censor, or spiritual director, in relation to the 
men who are doing the work of physical science, 
he really must get up his facts better. There 
will be an end to all chance of our kissing the rod 
if his Grace goes wrong a third time. He must 
not say again that “ no serious reply has been 
attempted” to a view which was discussed and 
repudiated, two years before, by one of the highest 
extant authorities on the subject; he must not say 
that Darwin accepted that which it can be proved 
he did not accept; he must not say that a doctrine 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


157 


has dropped into the abyss when it is quite 
obviously alive and kicking at the surface; he 
must not assimilate a man like Professor Dana to 
the components of an “ ignorant mob ” ; he must 
not say that things are beginning to be known 
which are not known at all; he must not say that 
“ slow and sulky acquiescence ” has been given 
to that which cannot yet boast of general acquies¬ 
cence of any kind ; he must not suggest that a 
view which has been publicly advocated by the 
Director of the Geological Survey and no less 
publicly discussed by many other authoritative 
writers has been intentionally and systematically 
ignored; he must not ascribe ill motives for a 
course of action which is the only proper one; 
and finally, if any one but myself were interested, 
I should say that he had better not waste his time 
in raking up the errors of those whose lives have 
been occupied, not in talking about science, but 
in toiling:, sometimes with success and sometimes 
with failure, to get some real work done. 

The most considerable difference I note among 
men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but 
in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable 
lapses. The Duke of Argyll has now a splendid 
opportunity for proving to the world in which of 
these categories it is hereafter to rank him. 


Dear Professor Huxley, —A short time 
before Mr. Darwin’s death, I had a conversation 



158 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


IV 


with him concerning the observations which had 
been made by Mr. Murray upon coral-reefs, and 
the speculations which had been founded upon 
those observations. I found that Mr. Darwin had 
very carefully considered the whole subject, and 
that while, on the one hand, he did not regard the 
actual facts recorded by Mr. Murray as absolutely 
inconsistent with his own theory of subsidence, 
on the other hand, he did not believe that they 
necessitated or supported the l^potbesis advanced 
by Mr. Murray. Mr. Darwin’s attitude, as I under¬ 
stood it, towards Mr. Murray’s objections to the 
theory of subsidence was exactly similar to that 
maintained by him with respect to Professor 
Semper’s criticism, which was of a very similar 
character; and his position with regard to the 
whole question was almost identical with that 
subsequently so clearly defined by Professor Dana 
in his well-known articles published in the 
‘‘American Journal of Science” for 1885. 

It is difficult to imagine how any one, ac¬ 
quainted with the scientific literature of the last 
seven years, could possibly suggest that Mr. 
Murray’s memoir published in 1880 had failed to 
secure a due amount of attention. Mr. Murray, 
by his position in the “ Challenger ” office, occupied 
an exceptionally favourable position for making 
his views widely known; and he had, moreover, 
the singular good fortune to secure from the first 
the advocacy of so able and brilliant a writer as 


IV 


AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY 


159 


Professor Archibald Geikie, who in a special dis¬ 
course and in several treatises on geology and 
physical geology very strongly supported the new 
theory. It would be an endless task to attempt 
to give references to the various scientific journals 
which have discussed the subject, but I may add 
that every treatise on geology which has been 
published, since Mr. Murray’s views were made 
known, has dealt with his observations at con¬ 
siderable length. This is true of Professor A. H. 
Green’s “ Physical Geology,” published in 1882; 
of Professor Prestwich’s “ Geology, Chemical and 
Physical ” ; and of Professor James Geikie’s “ Out¬ 
lines of Geology,” published in 1886. Similar 
prominence is given to the subject in De Lap- 
parent’s “ Traite de Geologie,” published in 1885, 
and in Credner’s “Elemente der Geologie,” which 
has appeared during the present year. If this be 
a “ conspiracy of silence,” where, alas ! can the 
geological speculator seek for fame ?—Yours very 
truly, J ohn W. J UDD. 

October 10, 1887. 


126 


V 


THE YALTJE OF WITNESS TO THE 
MIRACULOUS 

[1889] 

Charles, or, more properly, Karl, King of the 
Franks, consecrated Roman Emperor in St. 
Peter’s on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, and known 
to posterity as the Great (chiefly by his agglutina¬ 
tive Gallicised denomination of Charlemagne), 
was a man great in all ways, physically and 
mentally. Within a couple of centuries after his 
death Charlemagne became the centre of innum¬ 
erable legends ; and the myth-making process 
does not seem to have been sensibly interfered 
with by the existence of sober and truthful 
histories of the Emperor and of the times which 
immediately preceded and followed his reign, by a 
contemporary writer who occupied a high and 
confidential position in his court, and in that of 
his successor. This was one Eginhard, or Einhard, 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


161 


who appears to have been born about A.D. 770, 
and spent his youth at the court, being educated 
along with Charles’s sons. There is excellent 
contemporary testimony not only to Eginhard’s 
existence, but to his abilities, and to the place 
which he occupied in the circle of the intimate 
friends of the great ruler whose life he subse¬ 
quently wrote. In fact, there is as good evidence 
of Eginhard’s existence, of his official position, and 
of his being the author of the chief works attribut¬ 
ed to him, as can reasonably be expected in the 
case of a man who lived more than a thousand 
years ago, and was neither a great king nor a 
great warrior. The works are—1. “ The Life of 
the Emperor Karl.” 2. “ The Annals of the 
Franks.” 3. “ Letters.” 4. “ The History of the 
Translation of the Blessed Martyrs of Christ, SS. 
Marcellinus and Petrus.” 

It is to the last, as one of the most singular 
and interesting records of the period during which 
the Roman world passed into that of the Middle 
Ages, that I wish to direct attention. 1 It was 
written in the ninth century, somewhere, appar¬ 
ently, about the year 830, when Eginhard, ailing 
in health and weary of political life, had with¬ 
drawn to the monastery of Seligenstadt, of which 
he was the founder. A manuscript copy of the 
work, made in the tenth century, and once the 

1 My citations are made from Teulet’s Einhardi omnia quae 
extant opera, Paris, 1840-1843, which contains a biography of the 
author, a history of the text, with translations into French, and 
many valuable annotations. 


] G2 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS V 

property of the monastery of St. Bavon on the 
Scheldt, of which Eginhard was Abbot, is still 
extant, and there is no reason to believe that, in 
this copy, the original has been in any way inter¬ 
polated or otherwise tampered with. The main 
features of the strange story contained in the 
“ Historia Translations ” are set forth in the 
following pages, in which, in regard to all matters 
of importance, I shall adhere as closely as possible 
to Eginhard’s own words. 

While I was still at Court, busied with secular affairs, I often 
thought of the leisure which I hoped one day to enjoy in a 
solitary place, far away from the crowd, with which the liber¬ 
ality of Prince Louis, whom I then served, had provided me. 
This place is situated in that part of Germany which lies between 
the Neckar and the Maine, 1 2 and is nowadays called the Oden- 
wald by those who live in and about it. And here having built, 
according to my capacity and resources, not only houses and 
permanent dwellings, but also a basilica fitted for the perform¬ 
ance of divine service and of no mean style of construction, I 
began to think to what saint or martyr I could best dedicate it. 
Agooddealof time had passed while my thoughts fluctuated 
about this matter, when it happened that a certain deacon of 
the Roman Church, named Deusdona, arrived at the Court for 
the purpose of seeking the favour of the King in some affairs in 
which he was interested. He remained some time ; and then, 
having transacted his business, he was about to return to Rome, 
when one day, moved by courtesy to a stranger, we invited 
him to a modest refection ; and while talking of many things 
at table, mention was made of the translation of the body of 
the blessed Sebastian,- and of the neglected tombs of the 


1 At present included in the Duchies of Hesse-Darmstadt and 
Baden. 

2 This took place in the year 826 a.i>. The relics were 
brought from Rome and deposited in the Church of St. Medardua 
at Soissons. 



V 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


1G3 


martyrs, of which there is such a prodigious number at Rome ; 
and the conversation having turned towards the dedication of 
our new basilica, I began to inquire how it might be possible for 
me to obtain some of the true relics of the saints which rest at 
Rome. He at first hesitated, and declared that he did not know 
how that could be done. But observing that I was both anxious 
and curious about the subject, he promised to give me an answer 
some other day. 

When I returned to the question some time afterwards, he im¬ 
mediately drew from his bosom a paper, which he begged me to 
read when I was alone, and to tell him what I was disposed to 
think of that which was therein stated. I took the paper and, 
as he desired, read it alone and in secret. (Cap. i. 2, 3.) 

I shall have occasion to return to Deacon 
Deusdona’s conditions, and to what happened 
after Eginhard’s acceptance of them. Suffice it, 
for the present, to say that Eginhard’s notary, 
Ratleicus (Ratleig), was despatched to Rome and 
succeeded in securing two bodies, supposed to be 
those of the holy martyrs Marceliinus and Petrus; 
and when he had got as far on his homeward 
journey as the Burgundian town of Solothurn, 
or Soleure , 1 notary Ratleig despatched to his 
master, at St. Bavon, a letter announcing the 
success of his mission. 

As soon as by reading it I was assured of the arrival of the 
saints, I despatched a confidential messenger to Maestricht to 
gather together priests, other clerics, and also laymen, to go out 
to meet the coming saints as speedily as possible. And he and 
his companions, having lost no time, after a few days met those 
who had charge of the saints at Solothurn. Joined with them. 


1 Now included in Western Switzerland. 



164 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


V 


and with a vast crowd of people who gathered from all parts, 
singing hymns, and amidst great and universal rejoicings, they 
travelled quickly to the city of Argentoratum, which is now 
called Strasburg. Thence embarking on the Rhine, they came 
to the place called Portus, 1 and landing on the east bank of the 
river, at the fifth station thence they arrived at Michilinstadt, 2 
accompanied by an immense multitude, praising God. This 
place is in that forest of Germany which in modern times is called 
the Odenwald, and about six leagues from the Maine. And 
here, having found a basilica recently built by me, but not yet 
consecrated, they carried the sacred remains into it and deposited 
them therein, as if it were to be their final resting-place. As 
soon as all this was reported to me I travelled thither as quickly 
as I could. (Cap. ii. 14.) 

Three days after Eginhard’s arrival began the 
series of wonderful events which he narrates, and 
for which we have his personal guarantee. The 
first thing that he notices is the dream of a 
servant of Ratleig, the notary, who, being set to 
watch the holy relics in the church after vespers, 
went to sleep and, during his slumbers, had a 
vision of two pigeons, one white and one gray and 
white, which came and sat upon the bier over the 
relics; while, at the same time, a voice ordered 
the man to tell his master that the holy martyrs 
had chosen another resting-place and desired to 
be transported thither without delay. 

Unfortunately, the saints seem to have for¬ 
gotten to mention where they wished to go ; and, 
with the most anxious desire to gratify their 

1 Probably, according to Teulet, the present Sandhofer-fahrt 
a little below the embouchure of the Neckar. 

2 The present Michilstadt, thirty miles N.E. of Heidelberg 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


165 


smallest wishes, Eginhard was naturally greatly 
perplexed what to do. While in this state of 
mind, he was one day contemplating his “ great 
and wonderful treasure, more precious than all 
the gold in the workl,” when it struck him that 
the chest in which the relics were contained was 
quite unworthy of its contents ; and, after vespers, 
he gave orders to one of the sacristans to take the 
measure of the chest in order that a more fitting 
shrine might be constructed. The man, having 
lighted a wax candle and raised the pall which 
covered the relics, in order to carry out his 
master’s orders, was astonished and terrified to 
observe that the chest was covered with a blood¬ 
like exudation (loculum mirum in modum humore 
sanguineo undique distillantem), and at once sent 
a message to Eginhard. 

Then I and those priests who accompanied me beheld this 
stupendous miracle, worthy of all admiration. For just as when 
it is going to rain, pillars and slabs and marble images exude 
moisture, and, as it were, sweat, so the chest which contained 
the most sacred relics was found moist with the blood exuding 
on all sides. (Cap. ii. 16.) 

Three days’ fast was ordained in order that the 
meaning of the portent might be ascertained. All 
that happened, however, was that, at the end of 
that time, the “ blood,” which had been exuding in 
drops all the while, dried up. Eginhard is careful 
to say that the liquid “ had a saline taste, some¬ 
thing like that of tears, and was thin as water 


166 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS \ 

though of the colour of true blood,” and he clearly 
thinks this satisfactory evidence that it was 
blood. 

The same night, another servant had a vision, in 
which still more imperative orders for the removal 
of the relics were given ; and, from that time forth, 
“ not a single night passed without one, two, or 
even three of our companions receiving revelations 
in dreams that the bodies of the saints were to be 
transferred from that place to another.” At last a 
priest, Hildfrid, saw, in a dream, a venerable 
white-haired man in a priest’s vestments, who 
bitterly reproached Eginhard for not obeying the 
repeated orders of the saints; and, upon this, the 
journey was commenced. Why Eginhard delayed 
obedience to these repeated visions so long does 
not appear. He does not say so, in so many words, 
but the general tenor of the narrative leads one to 
suppose that Mulinheim (afterwards Seligenstadt) 
is the “ solitary place ” in which he had built the 
church which awaited dedication. In that case, 
all the people about him would know that he 
desired that the saints should go there. If a 
glimmering of secular sense led him to be a little 
suspicious about the real cause of the unanimity of 
the visionary beings who manifested themselves to 
his entourage , in favour of moving on, he does not 
say so. 

At the end of the first day’s journey, the precious 
relics were deposited in the church of St. Martin, 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIKACULOUS 


167 


in the village of Ostheim. Hither, a paralytic nun 
(sanctimcnialis qucedam paralytica ) of the name of 
Ruodlang was brought, in a car, by her friends and 
relatives from a monastery a league off. She spent 
the night watching and praying by the bier of the 
saints ; “and health returning to all her members, 
on the morrow she went back to her place whence 
she came, on her feet, nobody supporting her, or 
in any way giving her assistance.” (Cap. ii. 19.) 

On the second day, the relics were carried to 
Upper Mulinheim; and, finally, in accordance with 
the orders of the martyrs, deposited in the church 
of that place, which was therefore renamed 
Seligenstadt. Here, Daniel, a beggar boy of fifteen, 
and so bent that “ he could not look at the sky. 
without lying on his back,”collapsed and fell down 
during the celebration of the Mass. “ Thus he lay 
a long time, as if asleep, and all his limbs straight¬ 
ening and his flesh strengthening (recepta firmitate 
nervorum), he arose before our eyes, quite well.” 
(Cap. ii. 20.) 

Some time afterwards an old man entered the 
church on his hands and knees, being unable to 
use his limbs properly:— 

He, in presence of all of us, by the power of God and the 
merits of the blessed martyrs, in the same hour in which he 
entered was so perfectly cured that he walked without so much 
as a stick. And he said that, though he had been deaf for five 
years, his deafness had ceased along with the palsy. (Cap. iii. 
33 .) 


168 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


V 


Eginhard was now obliged to return to the 
Court at Aix-la-Chapelle, where his duties kept 
him through the winter; and he is careful to point 
out that the later miracles which he proceeds to 
speak of are known to him only at second hand. 
But, as he naturally observes, having seen such 
wonderful events with his own eyes, why should 
he doubt similar narrations when they are re¬ 
ceived from trustworthy sources ? 

Wonderful stories these are indeed, but as they 
are, for the most part, of the same general character 
as those already recounted, they may be passed 
over. There is, however, an account of a possessed 
maiden which is worth attention. This is set forth 
in a memoir, the principal contents of which are 
the speeches of a demon who declared himself to 
possess the singular appellation of “ Wiggo,” and 
revealed himself in the presence of many witnesses, 
before the altar, close to the relics of the blessed 
martyrs. It is noteworthy that the revelations 
appear to have been made in the shape of replies 
to the questions of the exorcising priest; and there 
is no means of judging how far the answers are, 
really, only the questions to which the patient re¬ 
plied yes or no. 

The possessed girl, about sixteen years of age, 
was brought by her parents to the basilica of the 
martyrs. 

When she approached the tomb containing the sacred bodies, 
the priest, according to custom, read the formula of exorcism 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


169 


over her head. When he began to ask how and when the 
demon had entered her, she answered, not in the tongue of 
the barbarians, which alone the girl knew, but in the Roman 
tongue. And when the priest was astonished and asked how 
she came to know Latin, when her parents, who stood by, were 
wholly ignorant of it, “ Thou hast never seen my parents,” was 
the reply. To this the priest, “ Whence art thou, then, if these 
are not thy parents ? ” And the demon, by the mouth of the 
girl, “lama follower and disciple of Satan, and for a long time 
I was gatekeeper (janitor) in hell ; but, for some years, along 
with eleven companions, I have ravaged the kingdom of the 
Franks.” (Cap. v. 49.) 

He then goes on to tell how they blasted the 
crops and scattered pestilence among beasts and 
men, because of the prevalent wickedness of the 
people . 1 

The enumeration of all these iniquities, in 
oratorical style, takes up a whole octavo page ; and 
at the end it is stated, “ All these things the 
demon spoke in Latin by the mouth of the girl.” 

And when the priest imperatively ordered him to come out, 
“ I shall go,”said he, “not in obedience to you, but on account 
of the power of the saints, who do not allow me to remain any 
longer.” And, having said this, he threw the girl down on the 
floor and there compelled her to lie prostrate for a time, as 
though she slumbered. After a little while, however, he going 
away, the girl, by the power of Christ and the merits of the 
blessed martyrs, as it were awaking from sleep, rose up quite 
well, to the astonishment of all present; nor after the demon 
had gone out was she able to speak Latin : so that it was plain 
enough that it was not she who had spoken in that tongue, but 
the demon by her mouth. (Cap. v. 51.) 


1 In the Middle Ages one of the most favourite accusations 
against witches was that they committed just these enormities. 



170 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS x 

If the “Historia Translation is” contained nothing 
more than has been laid before the reader, up to this 
time, disbelief in the miracles of which it gives 
so precise and full a record might well be regarded 
as hyper-scepticism. It might fairly be said, Here 
you have a man, whose high character, acute in¬ 
telligence, and large instruction are certified by 
eminent contemporaries ; a man who stood high in 
the confidence of one of the greatest rulers of any 
age, and whose other works prove him to be an 
accurate and judicious narrator of ordinary events. 
This man tells you, in language which. bears the 
stamp of sincerity, of things which happened within 
his own knowledge, or within that of persons in 
whose veracity he has entire confidence, while he 
appeals to his sovereign and the court as witnesses 
of others; what possible ground can there be for 
disbelieving him ? 

Well, it is hard upon Eginhard to say so, but it 
is exactly the honesty and sincerity of the man 
which are his undoing as a witness to the mira¬ 
culous. He himself makes it quite obvious that 
when his profound piety comes on the stage, his 
good sense and even his perception of right and 
wrong, make their exit. Let us go back to the 
point at which we left him, secretly perusing the 
letter of Deacon Deusdona. As he tells us, its 
contents were 

that he [the deacon] had many relics of saints at home, and that 
he would give them to me if I would furnish him with the 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


171 


means of returning to Rome ; he had observed that I had two 
mules, and if I would let him have one of them and would 
despatch with him a confidential servant to take charge of the 
relics, he would at once send them to me. This plausibly ex¬ 
pressed proposition pleased me, and I made up my mind to test 
the value of the somewhat ambiguous promise at once j 1 so 
giving him the mule and money for his journey I ordered my 
notary Ratleig (who already desired to go to Rome to offer his 
devotions there) to go with him. Therefore, having left Aix- 
la-Chapelle (where the Emperor and his Court resided at the 
time) they came to Soissons. Here they spoke with Hildoin, 
abbot of the monastery of St. Medardus, because the said deacon 
had assured him that he had the means of placing in his posses¬ 
sion the body of the blessed Tiburtius the Martyr. Attracted 
by which promises he (Hildoin) sent with them a certain priest, 
Hunus by name, a sharp man (hominem callidum), whom he 
ordered to receive and bring back the body of the martyr in 
question. And so, resuming their journey, they proceeded to 
Rome as fast as they could. (Cap. i. 3.) 

Unfortunately, a servant of the notary, one 
Reginbald, fell ill of a tertian fever, and impeded 
the progress of the party. However, this piece of 
adversity had its sweet uses; for three days before 
they reached Rome, Reginbald had a vision. 
Somebody habited as a deacon appeared to him 
and asked why his master was in such a hurry to 
get to Rome ; and when Reginbald explained their 
business, this visionary deacon, who seems to have 
taken the measure of his brother in the flesh with 
some accuracy, told him not by any means to 

1 It is pretty clear that Eginhard had his doubts about the 
deacon, whose pledges he qualifies as sponsiones inccrtce. But, 
to be sure, he wrote after events which fully justified scep¬ 
ticism. 


172 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


V 


expect that Deusdona would fulfil his promises. 
Moreover, taking the servant by the hand, he led 
him to the top of a high mountain and, showing 
him Rome (where the man had never been), 
pointed out a church, adding “ Tell Ratleig the 
thing he wants is hidden there; let him get it as 
quickly as he can and go back to his master.” 
By way of a sign that the order was authori¬ 
tative, the servant was promised that, from that 
time forth, his fever should disappear. And as 
the fever did vanish to return no more, the faith 
of Eginhard’s people in Deacon Deusdona natur¬ 
ally vanished with it (et fidem diaconi promissis 
non haberent). Nevertheless, they put up at the 
deacon’s house near St. Peter ad Vincula. But. 
time went on and no relics made their appearance, 
while the notary and the priest were put off with 
all sorts of excuses—the brother to whom the 
relics had been confided was gone to Beneventum 
and not expected back for some time, and so on 
—until Ratleig and Hunus began to despair, and 
were minded to return, infecto negotio. 

But my notary, calling to mind his servant’s dream, proposed 
to his companion that they should go to the cemetery which 
their host had talked about without him. So, having found and 
hired a guide, they went in the first place to the basilica of the 
blessed Tiburtius in the Via Labicana, about three thousand 
paces from the town, and cautiously and carefully inspected the 
tomb of that martyr, in order to discover whether it could be 
opened without any one being the wiser. Then they descended 
into the adjoining crypt, in which the bodies of the blessed 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


173 


martyrs of Christ, Marcellinus and Petrus, were buried ; and, 
having made out the nature of their tomb, they went away 
thinking their host would not know what they had been about. 
But things fell out differently from what they had imagined. 
(Cap. L 7.) 

In fact. Deacon Deusdona, who doubtless kept 
an eye on his guests, knew all about their 
manoeuvres and made haste to offer his services, in 
order that, “ with the help of God ” (si Deus vntis 
eorum faxere dignaretur), they should all work 
together. The deacon was evidently alarmed lest 
they should succeed without his help. 

So, by way of preparation for the contem¬ 
plated xol avec effraction they fasted three days; 
and then, at night, without being seen, they be¬ 
took themselves to the basilica of St. Tiburtiu3, 
and tried to break open the altar erected over 
his remains. But the marble proving too solid, 
they descended to the crypt, and, “ having evoked 
our Lord Jesus Christ and adored the holy 
martyrs,” they proceeded to prise off the stone 
which covered the tomb, and thereby exposed the 
bodv of the most sacred martyr, Marcellinus, 
“ whose head rested on a marble tablet on which 
his name was inscribed.” The body was taken 
up with the greatest veneration, wrapped in a rich 
covering, and given over to the keeping of the 
deacon and his brother, Lunison, while the stone 
was replaced with such care that no sign of the 
theft remained. 


174 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


V 


As sacrilegious proceedings of this kind were 
punishable with death by the Roman law, it 
seems not unnatural that Deacon Deusdona should 
have become uneasy, and have urged Ratleig to be 
satisfied with what he had got and be off with his 
spoils. But the notary having thus cleverly 
captured the blessed Marcellinus, thought it a 
pity he should be parted from the blessed Petrus, 
side by side with whom he had rested, for five 
hundred years and more, in the same sepulchre (as 
Eginhard pathetically observes); and the pious 
man could neither eat, drink, nor sleep, until he 
had compassed his desire to re-unite the saintly 
colleagues. This time, apparently in consequence 
of Deusdona’s opposition to any further resurrec¬ 
tionist doings, he took counsel with a Greek monk, 
one Basil, and, accompanied by Hunus, but saying 
nothing to Deusdona, they committed another 
sacrilegious burglary, securing this time, not only 
the body of the blessed Petrus, but a quantity of 
dust, which they agreed the priest should take, 
and tell his employer that it was the remains of the 
blessed Tiburtius. How Deusdona was ** squared/* 
and what he got for his not very valuable com¬ 
plicity in these transactions, does not appear. But 
at last the relics were sen t off in charge of Lunison, 
the brother of Deusdona, and the priest Hunus, as 
far as Pavia, while Ratleig stopped behind for a 
week to see if the robbery was discovered, and, 
presumably, to act as a blind, if any hue and cry 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


175 


was raised. But, as everything remained quiet, the 
notary betook himself to Pavia, where he found 
Lunison and Hunus awaiting his arrival. The 
notary’s opinion of the character of his worthy 
colleagues, however, may be gathered from the 
fact that, having persuaded them to set out in 
advance along a road which he told them he was 
about to take, he immediately adopted another 
route, and, travelling by way of St. Maurice and 
the Lake of Geneva, eventually reached Soleure. 

Eginhard tells all this story with the most naive 
air of unconsciousness that there is anything 
remarkable about an abbot, and a high officer of 
state to boot, being an accessory, both before and 
after the fact, to a most gross and scandalous act 
of sacrilegious and burglarious robbery. And an 
amusing sequel to the story proves that, where 
relics were concerned, his friend Hildoin, another 
high ecclesiastical dignitary, was even less scrupu¬ 
lous than himself. 

On going to the palace early one morning, after 
the saints were safely bestowed at Seligenstadt, he 
found Hildoin waiting for an audience in the 
Emperor’s antechamber, and began to talk to him 
about the miracle of the bloody exudation. In the 
course of conversation, Eginhard happened to 
allude to the remarkable fineness of the garment 
of the blessed Marcellinus. Whereupon Abbot 
Hildoin observed (to Eginhard’s stupefaction) that 
his observation was quite correct. Much astonished 
127 


176 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


v 


at this remark from a person who was supposed 
not to have seen the relics, Eginhard asked him 
how he knew that ? Upon this, Hildoin saw that 
he had better make a clean breast of it, and he 
told the following story, which he had received 
from his priestly agent, Hurms. While Hunus and 
Lunison were at Pavia, waiting for Eginhard’s 
notary, Hunus (according to his own account) had 
robbed the robbers. The relics were placed in a 
church ; and a number of laymen and clerics, of 
whom Hunus was one, undertook to keep watch 
over them. One night, however, all the watchers, 
save the wide-awake Hunus, went to sleep; and 
then, according to the story which this “ sharp ” 
ecclesiastic foisted upon his patron, 

it was borne in upon his mind that there must be some great 
reason why all the people, except himself, had suddenly become 
somnolent; and, determining to avail himself of the opportunity 
thus offered (oblata oecasione utendum ), he rose and, having 
lighted a candle, silently approached the chests. Then, having 
burnt through the threads of the seals with the flame of the 
candle, he quickly opened the chests, which had no locks ; 1 and, 
taking out portions of each of the bodies which were thus ex¬ 
posed, he closed the chests and connected the burnt ends of the 
threads with the seals again, so that they appeared not to have 
been touched ; and, no one having seen him, he returned to his 
place. (Cap. iii. 23.) 

Hildoin went on to tell Eginhard that Hunus at 
first declared to him that these purloined relics 

1 The words are scrinia sine clave, which seems to mean 
'‘having no key.” But the circumstances forbid the idea of 
breaking open. 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIKACULOUS 


177 


belonged to St. Tiburtius; but afterwards con¬ 
fessed, as a great secret, how be had come by 
them, and he wound up his discourse thus: 

They have a place of honour beside St. Medardus, where they 
are worshipped with great veneration by all the people; hut 
wdiether we may keep them or not is for your judgment. (Cap. 
iii. 23.) 

Poor Eginhard was thrown into a state of great 
perturbation of mind by this revelation. An 
acquaintance of his had recently told him of a 
rumour that was spread about that Hunus had 
contrived to abstract all the remains of SS. 
Marcellinus and Petrus while Eginhard’s agents 
were in a drunken sleep; and that, while the real 
relics were in Abbot Hildoin’s hands at St. 
Medardus, the shrine at Seligenstadt contained 
nothing but a little dust. Though greatly annoyed 
by this “ execrable rumour, spread everywhere by 
the subtlety of the devil,” Eginhard had doubtless 
comforted himself by his supposed knowledge of 
its falsity, and he only now discovered how con¬ 
siderable a foundation there was for the scandal. 
There was nothing for it but to insist upon the 
return of the stolen treasures. One would have 
thought that the holy man, who had admitted 
himself to be knowingly a receiver of stolen goods, 
would have made instant restitution and begged 
only for absolution. But Eginhard intimates that 
he had very great difficulty in getting his brother 
abbot to see that even restitution was necessary. 


178 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 




Hildoin’s proceedings were not of such a nature 
as to lead any one to place implicit confidence in 
anything he might say; still less had his agent, 
priest Hunus, established much claim to confi¬ 
dence ; and it is not surprising that Eginhard. 
should have lost no time in summoning his notary 
and Lunison to his presence, in order that he 
might hear what they had to say about the 
business. They, however, at once protested that 
priest Hunus’s story was a parcel of lies, and that 
after the relics left Rome no one had any oppor¬ 
tunity of meddling with them. Moreover, Lunison, 
throwing himself at Eginhard’s feet, confessed 
with many tears what actually took place. It will 
be remembered that after the body of St. Mar- 
cellinus was abstracted from its tomb, Ratlem 
deposited it in the house of Deusdona, in charge 
of the latter’s brother, Lunison. But Hunus, 
being very much disappointed that he could not 
get hold of the body of St. Tiburtius, and afraid 
to go back to his abbot empty-handed, bribed 
Lunison with four pieces of gold and five of silver 
to give him access to the chest. This Lunison 
did, and Hunus helped himself to as much as 
would fill a gallon measure (vas sextarii mensitram) 
of the sacred remains. Eginhard’s indignation at 
the “rapine” of this “ nequissimus nebulo ” is 
exquisitely droll. It would appear that the 
adage about the receiver being as bad as the thief 
was not current in the ninth century. 


V WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 179 

Let us now briefly sura up the history of the 
acquisition of the relics. Eginhard makes a con¬ 
tract with Deusdona for the delivery of certain 
relics which the latter says he possesses. Egin¬ 
hard makes no inquiry how he came by them; 
otherwise, the transaction is innocent enough. 

Deusdona turns out to be a swindler, and has 
no relics. Thereupon Eginhard’s agent,* after due 
fasting and prayer, breaks open the tombs and 
helps himself. 

Eginhard discovers by the self-betrayal of his 
brother abbot, Hildoin, that portions of his relics 
have been stolen and conveyed to the latter. 
With much ado he succeeds in gettingthem back. 

Hildoin’s agent, Hunus, in delivering these 
stolen goods to him, at first declared they were 
the relics of St. Tiburtius, which Hildoin desired 
him to obtain; but afterwards invented a story of 
their being the product of a theft, which the 
providential drowsiness of his companions enabled 
him to perpetrate, from the relics which Hildoin 
well knew were the property of his friend. 

Lunison, on the contrary, swears that all this 
story is false, and that he himself was bribed by 
Hunus to allow him to steal what he pleased from 
the property confided to his own and his brothers 
care by their guest Ratleig. And the honest 
notary himself seems to have no hesitation about 
lying and stealing to any extent, where the ac¬ 
quisition of relics is the object in view. 


180 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


V 


For a parallel to these transactions one must 
read a police report of the doings of a “ long firm ” 
or of a set of horse-coupers; yet Eginhard seems 
to be aware of nothing, but that he has been 
rather badly used by his friend Hildoin, and the 
“ nequissimus nebulo ” Hunus. 

It is not easy for a modern Protestant, still less 
for any one who has the least tincture of scientific 
culture, whether physical or historical, to picture 
to himself the state of mind of a man of the 
ninth century, however cultivated, enlightened, 
ahd sincere he may have been. His deepest con¬ 
victions, his most cherished hopes, were bound up 
with the belief in the miraculous. Life was a 
constant battle between saints and demons for the 
possession of the souls of men. The most super¬ 
stitious among our modern countrymen turn to 
supernatural agencies only when natural causes 
seem insufficient; to Eginhard and his friends the 
supernatural was the rule; and the sufficiency of 
natural causes was allowed only when there was 
nothing to suggest others. 

Moreover, it must be recollected that the 
possession of miracle-working relics was greatly 
coveted, not only on high, but on very low 
grounds. To a man like Eginhard, the mere 
satisfaction of the religious sentiment was 
obviously a powerful attraction. But, more than 
this, the possession of such a treasure was an 
immense practical advantage. If the saints were 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


181 


duly flattered and worshipped, there was no 
telling what benefits might result from their 
interposition on your behalf. For physical evils, 
access to the shrine was like the grant of the use 
of a universal pill and ointment manufactory; 
and pilgrimages thereto might suffice to cleanse 
the performers from any amount of sin. A letter 
to Lupus, subsequently Abbot of Ferrara, written 
while Eginhard was smarting under the grief 
caused by the loss of his much-loved wife Imma, 
affords a striking insight into the current view of 
the relation between the glorified saints and their 
worshippers. The writer shows that he is any¬ 
thing but satisfied with the way in which he has 
been treated by the blessed martyrs whose re¬ 
mains he has taken such pains to “ convey ” to 
Seligenstadt, and to honour there as they would 
never have been honoured in their Roman ob¬ 
scurity. 

It is an aggravation of ray grief and a reopening of my wound, 
that our vows have been of no avail, and that the faith which 
we placed in the merits and intervention of the martyrs has 
been utterly disappointed. 

We may admit, then, without impeachment of 
Eginhard’s sincerity, or of his honour under all 
ordinary circumstances, that when piety, self- 
interest, the glory of the Church in general, and 
that of the church at Seligenstadt in particular, 
all pulled one way, even the workaday principles 
of morality were disregarded; and, a fortiori , 


1S2 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


V 


anything like proper investigation of the reality 
of alleged miracles was thrown to the winds. 

And if this was the condition of mind of such a 
man as Eginhard, what is it not legitimate to 
suppose may have been that of Deacon Deusdona, 
Lunison, Hunus, and Company, thieves and cheats 
by their own confession, or of the probably 
hysterical nun, or of the professional beggars, for 
whose incapacity to walk and straighten them¬ 
selves there is no guarantee but their own ? Who 
is to make sure that the exorcist of the demon 
Wiggo was not just such another priest as Hunus ; 
and is it not at least possible, when Eginhard’s 
servants dreamed, night after night, in such a 
curiously coincident fashion, that a careful inquirer 
might have found they were very anxious to 
please their master? 

Quite apart from deliberate and conscious 
fraud (which is a rarer thing than is often 
supposed), people, whose mythopoeic faculty is 
once stirred, are capable of saying the thing that 
is not, and of acting as they should not, to an 
extent which is hardly imaginable by persons 
who are not so easily affected by the contagion of 
blind faith. There is no falsity so gross that 
honest men and, still more, virtuous women, 
anxious to promote a good cause, will not lend 
themselves to it*without any clear consciousness 
of the moral bearings of what they are doing. 

The cases of miraculously-effected cures of 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


183 


which Eginhard is ocular witness appear to 
belong to classes of disease in which malingering 
is possible or hysteria presumable. Without 
modern means of diagnosis, the names given to 
them are quite worthless. One “ miracle,” how¬ 
ever, in which the patient, a woman, was cured by 
the mere sight of the church in which the relics 
of the blessed martyrs lay, is an unmistakable 
case of dislocation of the lower jaw; and it is 
obvious that, as not unfrequently happens in such 
accidents in weakly subjects, the jaws slipped 
suddenly back into place, perhaps in consequence 
of a jolt, as the woman rode towards the church. 
(Cap. v. 53.) 1 

There is also a good deal said about a very 
questionable blind man—one Albricus (Alberich ?) 
■—who, having been cured, not of his blindness, 
but of another disease under which he laboured, 
took up his quarters- at Seligenstadt, and came out 
as a prophet, inspired by the Archangel Gabriel. 
Eginhard intimates that his prophecies were ful¬ 
filled ; but as he does not state exactly what they 
were, or how they were accomplished, the state¬ 
ment must be accepted with much caution. It is 
obvious that he was not the man to hesitate to 
“ ease ” a prophecy until it fitted, if the credit of 

1 Eginhard speaks with lofty contempt o£the “ vana ac super- 
stitiosa pnesumptio ” of the poor woman’s companions in trying 
to alleviate her sufferings with “herbs and frivolous incanta¬ 
tions.” Vain enough, no doubt, hut the “ muliereulse ” might 
have returned the epithet “ supeistitious ” with interest. 


184 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


v 


the shrine of his favourite saints could be increased 
by such a procedure. There is no impeachment 
of his honour in the supposition. The logic of the 
matter is quite simple, if somewhat sophistical. 
The holiness of the church of the martyrs guaran¬ 
tees the reality of the appearance of the Archangel 
Gabriel there ; and what the archangel says must 
be true. Therefore, if anything seem to be wrong, 
that must be the mistake of the transmitter; and, 
in justice to the archangel, it must be suppressed 
or set right. This sort of “ reconciliation ” is not 
unknown in quite modern times, and among people 
who would be very much shocked to be compared 
with a “ benighted papist ” of the ninth century. 

The readers of this essay are, I imagine, very 
largely composed of people who would be shocked 
to be regarded as anything but enlightened 
Protestants. It is not unlikely that those of 
them who have accompanied me thus far may be 
disposed to say, “ Well, this is all very amusing as 
a story, but what is the practical interest of it ? 
We are not likely to believe in the miracles worked 
by the spolia of SS. Marcellinus and Petrus, or by 
those of any other saints in the Roman Calendar.’* 

The practical interest is this : if you donot believe 
in these miracles recounted by a witness whose 
character and competency are firmly established, 
whose sincerity cannot be doubted, and who 
appeals to his sovereign and other contemporaries 
as witnesses of the truth of what he says, in a 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


185 


document of which a MS. copy exists, probably 
dating within a century of the author's death, 
why do you profess to believe in stories of a like 
character, which are found in documents of the 
dates and of the authorship of which nothing 
is certainly determined, and no known copies of 
which come within two or three centuries of the 
events they record ? If it be true that the four 
Gospels and the Acts were written by Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John, all that we know of these 
persons comes to nothing in comparison with our 
knowledge of Eginhard; and not only is there no 
proof that the traditional authors of these works 
wrote them, but very strong reasons to the contrary 
may be alleged. If, therefore, you refuse to believe 
that “ Wiggo ” was cast out of the possessed girl 
on Eginhard’s authority, with what justice can you 
profess to believe that the legion of devils were 
cast out of the man among the tombs of the 
Gadarenes ? And if, on the other hand, you accept 
Eginhard’s evidence, why do you laugh at the 
supposed efficacy of relics and the saint-worship of 
the modern Romanists ? It cannot be pretended, 
in the face of all evidence, that the Jews of the 
year 30 A.D., or thereabouts, were less imbued 
with the belief in the supernatural than were the 
Franks of the year 800 A.D. The same influences 
were at work in each case, and it is only reasonable 
to suppose that the results were the same. If the 
evidence of Eginhard is insufficient to lead reason- 


186 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS v 

able men to believe in the miracles he relates, a 
fortiori the evidence afforded by the Gospels and 
the Acts must be so. 1 

But it may be said that no serious critic denies 
the genuineness of the four great Pauline Epistles 
—Galatians, First and Second Corinthians, and 
Romans—and that in three out of these four Paul 
lays claim to the power of working miracles. 2 
Must we suppose, therefore, that the Apostle to 
the Gentiles has stated that which is false ? But 
to how much does this so-called claim amount ? It 
may mean much or little. Paul nowhere tells us 
what he did in this direction; and in his sore 
need to justify his assumption of apostleship 
against the sneers of his enemies, it is hardly likely 
that, if he had any very striking cases to bring 
forward, he would have neglected evidence so well 
calculated to put them to shame. And, without 
the slightest impeachment of Pauls veracity, we 
must further remember that his strongly-marked 
mental characteristics, displayed in unmistakable 
fashion in these Epistles, are anything but those 
which would justify us in regarding him as a 
critical witness respecting matters of fact, or as a 


1 Of course there is nothing new in this argument; but it 
does not grow weaker by age. And the case of Eginhard is far 
more instructive than that of Augustine, because the former 
has so very frankly, though incidentally, revealed to us not 
only his own mental and moral habits, but those of the people 
about him. 

2 See 1 Cor. xii. 10-28 ; 2 Cor. vi. 12; Rom. xv. 19. 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


187 


trustworthy interpreter of their significance. When 
a man testifies to a miracle, he not only states a 
fact, but he adds an interpretation of the fact. We 
may admit his evidence as to the former, and yet 
think his opinion as to the latter worthless. If 
Eginhard’s calm and objective narrative of the 
historical events of his time is no guarantee for 
the soundness of his judgment where the super¬ 
natural is concerned, the heated, rhetoric of the 
Apostle of the Gentiles, his absolute confidence in 
the “inner light,” and the extraordinary concep¬ 
tions of the nature and requirements of logical 
proof which he betrays, in page after page of his 
Epistles, afford still less security. 

There is a comparatively modern man who sh’ared 
to the full Paul’s trust in the “inner light,” and 
who, though widely different from the fiery evan¬ 
gelist of Tarsus in various obvious particulars, yet, 
if I am not mistaken, shares his deepest charac¬ 
teristics. I speak of George Fox, who separated 
himself from the current Protestantism of England, 
in the seventeenth century, as Paul separated 
himself from the Judaism of the first century, at 
the bidding of the “ inner light ”; who went 
through persecutions as serious as those which 
Paul enumerates; who was beaten, stoned, cast 
out for dead, imprisoned nine times, sometimes for 
long periods ; who was in perils on land and perils 
at sea. George Fox was an even more widely- 
travelled missionary ; while his success in founding 


188 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS v 

congregations, and his energy in visiting them, not 
merely in Great Britain and Ireland and the West 
India Islands, but on the continent of Europe and 
that of North America, were no less remarkable. 
A few years after Fox began to preach, there were 
reckoned to be a thousand Friends in prison in 
the various gaols of England : at his death, less 
than fifty years after the foundation of the sect, 
there were 70,000 Quakers in the United Kingdom. 
The cheerfulness with which these people—women 
as well as men—underwent martyrdom in this 
country and in the New England States is one of 
the most remarkable facts in the history of 
religion. 

No one who reads the voluminous autobiography 
of “ Honest George ” can doubt the man’s utter 
truthfulness; and though, in his multitudinous 
letters, he but rarely rises far above the incoherent 
commonplaces of a street preacher, there can be 
no question of his power as a speaker, nor any 
doubt as to the dignity and attractiveness of his 
personality, or of his possession of a large 
amount of practical good sense and governing 
faculty. 

But that George Fox had full faith in his own 
powers as a miracle-worker, the following passage 
of his autobiography (to which others might be 
added) demonstrates:— 

Now after I was set at liberty from Nottingham gaol (where I 
had been kept a prisoner a pretty long time) I travelled as 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIKACULOUS 


189 


before, in the work of the Lord. And coming to Mansfield 
Woodliouse, there was a distracted woman, under a doctor’s 
hand, with her hair let loose all about her ears ; and he was 
about to let her blood, she being first bound, and many people 
being about her, holding her by violence ; but he could get no 
blood from her. And I desired them to unbind her and let her 
ilone ; for they could not touch the spirit in her by which she 
was tormented. So they did unbind her, and I was moved to 
ipeak to her, and in the name of the Lord to bid her he quiet 
ind still. And she was so. And the Lord’s power settled her 
aiind and she mended ; and afterwards received the truth and 
continued in it to her death. And the Lord’s name was 
honoured ; to whom the glory of all His works belongs. Many 
great and wonderful things were wrought by the heavenly power 
in those days. For the Lord made bare His omnipotent arm and 
manifested His power to the astonishment of many; by the 
healing virtue whereof many have been delivered from great 
infirmities, and the devils were made subject through His name : 
of which particular instances might be given beyond what this 
unbelieving age is able to receive or bear. 1 

It needs no long study of Fox’s writings, how¬ 
ever, to arrive at the conviction that the distinc¬ 
tion between subjective and objective verities had 
not the same place in his mind as it has in that of 
an ordinary mortal. When an ordinary person would 
say “ I thought so and so,” or “ I made up my 
mind to do so and so,” George Fox says, “It was 
opened to me,” or “ at the command of God I 
did so and so.” “ Then at the command of God, on 
the ninth day of the seventh month 1643 (Fox being 
just nineteen), I left my relations and brake off all 

1 A Journal or Historical Account of the Life , Travels , 
Sufferings, and Christian Experiences, &c ., of George Fox . Ed. 
1694, pp. 27, 28. 


190 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


V 


familiarity or friendship with young or old/’ 
“About the beginning of the year 1647 I was 
moved of the Lord to go into Darbyshire.” Fox 
hears voices and he sees visions, some of which he 
brings before the reader with apocalyptic power in 
the simple and strong English, alike untutored 
and undefiled, of which, like John Bunyan, his 
contemporary, he was a master. 

“And one morning, as I was sitting by the fire, 
a great cloud came over me and a temptation beset 
me; and I sate still. And it was said, All things 
come by Nature. And the elements and stars came 
over me; so that I was in a manner quite clouded 
with it. . . . And as I sate still under it, and let it 
alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true voice 
arose in me which said, There is a living God who 
made all things. And immediately the cloud and 
the temptation vanished away, and life rose over 
it all, and my heart was glad and I praised the 
living God ” (p. 13). 

If George Fox could speak, as he proves in this 
and some other passages he could write, his as¬ 
tounding influence on the contemporaries of Milton 
and of Cromwell is no mystery. But this modern 
reproduction of the ancient prophet, with his 
“ Thus saith the Lord,” “ This is the work of the 
Lord,” steeped in supernaturalism and glorying in 
blind faith, is the mental antipodes of the philo¬ 
sopher, founded in naturalism and a fanatic for 
evidence, to whom these affirmations inevitably 


V 


WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS 


191 


suggest the previous question: “ How do you 
know that the Lord saith it ? ” “ How do you know 
that the Lord doeth it ? ” and who is compelled to 
demand that rational ground for belief, without 
which, to the man of science, assent is merely an 
immoral pretence. 

And it is this rational ground of belief which the 
writers of the Gospels, no less than Paul, and Egin- 
hard, and Fox, so little dream of offering that they 
would regard the demand for it as a kind of bias- 


VI 


POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 
[1891] 

In the course of a discussion which has been going 
on during the last two years, 1 it has been main¬ 
tained by the defenders of ecclesiastical Christ¬ 
ianity that the demonology of the books of the 
New Testament is an essential and integral part 
of the revelation of the nature of the spiritual 
world promulgated by Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, 
if the historical accuracy of the Gospels and of 
the Acts of the Apostles is to be taken for granted, 
if the teachings of the Epistles are divinely in¬ 
spired, and if the universal belief and practice of 
the primitive Church are the models which all 
later times must follow, there can be no doubt 
that those who accept the demonology are in the 
right. It is as plain as language can make it, that 
the writers of the Gospels believed in the existence 

1 1889-1891. See the next Essay (VII) and those which 
follow it. 


VI 


POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 193 


of Satan and the surbordinate ministers of evil as 
strongly as they believed in that of God and the 
angels, and that they had an unhesitating faith in 
possession and in exorcism. No reader of the first 
three Gospels can hesitate to admit that, in the 
opinion of those persons among whom the tradi¬ 
tions out of which they are compiled arose, Jesus 
held, and constantly acted upon, the same theory 
of the spiritual world. Nowhere do we find the 
slightest hint that he doubted the theory, or 
questioned the efficacy of the curative operations 
based upon it. 

Thus, when such a story as that about the 
Gadarene swine is placed before us, the importance 
of the decision, whether it is to be accepted or 
rejected, cannot be overestimated. If the demon¬ 
ological part of it is to be accepted, the authority 
of Jesus is unmistakably pledged to the demono- > 
logical system current in Judaea in the first 
century. The belief in devils who possess men J 
and can be transferred from men to pigs, becomes/ 
as much a part of Christian dogma as any article 
of the creeds. If it is to be rejected, there are two 
alternative conclusions. Supposing the Gospels to 
be historically accurate, it follows that Jesus 
shared in the errors, respecting the nature of the 
spiritual world, prevalent in the age in which he 
lived and among the people of his nation. If, on 
the other hand, the Gospel traditions gives us only 
a popular version of the sayings and doings of 


194 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 


vi 


Jesus, falsely coloured and distorted by the super- 

I stitious imaginings of the minds through which it 
had passed, what guarantee have we that a similar 
'unconscious falsification, in accordance with pre¬ 
conceived ideas, may not have taken place in 
respect of other reported sayings and doings ? 
What is to prevent a conscientious inquirer from 
finding liimself at last in a purely agnostic position 
with respect to the teachings of Jesus, and conse¬ 
quently with respect to the fundamentals of 
Christianity ? 

In dealing with the question whether the 
Gadarene story was to be believed or not, I con¬ 
fined myself altogether to a discussion of the value 
of the evidence in its favour. And, as it was easy 
to prove that this consists of nothing more than 
three partially discrepant, but often verbally coin¬ 
cident, versions of an original, of the authorship 
\ of which nobody knows anything, it appeared to me 
that it was wholly worthless. Even if the event 
described had been probable, such evidence would 
have required corroboration; being grossly improb¬ 
able, and involving acts questionable in their 
1 moral and legal aspect, the three accounts sank to 
^ the level of mere tales. 

Thus far, I am unable, even after the most care¬ 
ful revision, to find any flaw in my argument; and 
I incline to think none has been found by my 
critics—at least, if they have, they have kept the 
discovery to themselves. 


VI 


POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 195 


In another part of my treatment of the case I 
have been less fortunate. I was careful to say 
that, for anything I could “ absolutely prove to the 
contrary,” there might be in the universe demonic 
beings who could enter into and possess men, and 
even be transferred from them to pigs; and that 
I, for my part, could not venture to declare a 
;priori that the existence of such entities was 
“ impossible.” I was, however, no less careful to 
remark that I thought the evidence hitherto 
adduced in favour of the existence of such beings 


“ ridiculously insufficient ” to warrant the belief in 
them. 

To my surprise, this statement of what, after 
the closest reflection, I still conceive to be the 
right conclusion, has been hailed as a satisfactory 
admission by opponents, and lamented as a peril¬ 
ous concession by sympathisers Indeed, the tone 
of the comments of some candid friends has been 
such that I began to suspect that I must be en¬ 
tering upon a process of retrogressive metamor¬ 
phosis which might eventually give me a place 
^mong the respectabilities. The prospect, perhaps, 
ought to have pleased me ; but I confess I felt 
something of the uneasiness of the tailor who said 
that, whenever a customer’s circumference was 
either much less, or much more, than at the last 
measurement, he at once sent in his bill; and I 
was not consoled until I recollected that, thirteen 
years ago, in discussing Hume’s essay on 


196 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 


VI 


" Miracles,” I had quoted, with entire assent, the 
following passage from his writings: “ Whatever is 
intelligible and can be distinctly conceived implies 
no contradiction, and can never be proved false by 
any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning 
a priori” 1 

Now, it is certain that the existence of demons 
can be distinctly conceived. In fact, from the 
earliest times of which we have any record to the 
present day, the great majority of mankind have 
had extremely distinct conceptions of them, and 
their practical life has been more or less shaped 
by those conceptions. Further, the notion of the 
existence of such beings “ implies no contradiction.” 
No doubt, in our experience, intelligence and 
volition are always found in connection with a 
certain material organisation, and never discon¬ 
nected with it; while, by the hypothesis, demons 
have no such material substratum. But then, as 
everybody knows, the exact relation between 
mental and physical phenomena, even in ourselves, 
is the subject of endless dispute. We may all 
have our opinions as to whether mental pheno¬ 
mena have a substratum distinct from that which 
is assumed to underlie material phenomena, or not; 
though if any one thinks he has demonstrative 
evidence of either the existence or the non-exist¬ 
ence of a “ soul,” all I can say is, his notion ol 

1 Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding , p. 5 ; 174g 
The passage is cited and discussed in my Hume , pp. 132, 133. 


VI 


POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 197 


demonstration differs from mine. Bat, if it be 
impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of a 
“ substance ” of mental phenomena—that is, of a 
soul—independent of material “ substance ”; if the 
idea of such a “ soul ” is “ intelligible and can be 
distinctly conceived/’ then it follows that it is not 
justifiable to talk of demons as “ impossibilities/’ 
The idea of their existence implies no more “ con¬ 
tradiction” than does the idea of the existence of 
pathogenic microbes in the air. Indeed, the 
microbes constitute a tolerably exact physical 
analogue of the “ powers of the air ” of ancient 
belief. 

Strictly speaking, I am unaware of any thing that 
has a right to the title of an “ impossibility ” 
except a contradiction in terms. There are 
impossibilities logical, but none natural. A “ round 
square,” a “ present past,” “ two parallel lines that 
intersect,” are impossibilities, because the ideas 
denoted by the predicates, round , 'present , intersect , 
are contradictory of the ideas denoted by the 
subjects, square, past , parallel. But walking on 
water, or turning water into wine, or procreation 
without male intervention, or raising the dead, are 
plainly not " impossibilities ” in this sense. 

In the affirmation, that a man walked upon 
water, the idea of the subject is not contradictory 
of that in the predicate. Naturalists are familiar 
with insects which walk on water, and imagination 
has no more difficulty in putting a man in place of 


198 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 


VI 


the insect than it has in giving a man some of the 
attributes of a bird and making an angel of him ; 
or in ascribing to him the ascensive tendencies of 
a balloon, as the “ levitationists ” do. Undoubt¬ 
edly, there are very strong physical and biological 
arguments for thinking it extremely improbable that 
a man could be supported on the surface of the 
water as the insect is; or that his organisation 
could be compatible with the possession and use of 
wings; or that he could rise through the air without 
mechanical aid. Indeed, if we have any reason to 
believe that our present knowledge of the nature 
of things exhausts the possibilities of nature, we 
might properly say that the attributes of men are 
contradictory of walking on water, or floating in 
the air, and consequently that these acts are truly 
“impossible” for him. But it is sufficiently 
obvious, not only that we are at the beginning of 
our knowledge of nature, instead of having arrived 
at the end of it, but that the limitations of our 
faculties are such that we never can be in a position 
to set bounds to the possibilities of nature. We 
have knowledge of what is happening and of what 
has happened ; of what will happen we have and 
can have no more than expectation, grounded on 
our more or less correct reading of past experience 
and prompted by the faith, begotten of that experi¬ 
ence, that the order of nature in the future will 
resemble its order in the past. 

The same considerations apply to the other 


VI 


POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 199 


examples of supposed miraculous events. The 
change of water into, wine undoubtedly implies a 
contradiction, and is assuredly “ impossible/’ if we 
are permitted to assume that the “ elementary 
bodies ” of the chemists are, now and for ever, 
immutable. Not only, however, is a negative 
proposition of this kind incapable of proof, but 
modern chemistry is inclining towards the contrary 
doctrine. And if carbon can be got out of 
hydrogen or oxygen, the conversion of water into 
wine comes within range of scientific possibility—it 
becomes a mere question of molecular arrange¬ 
ment. 

As for virgin procreation, it is not only clearly 
imaginable, but modern biology recognises it as an 
every-day occurrence among some groups of 
animals. So with restoration to life after death. 
Certain animals, long as dry as mummies, and, to 
all appearance, as dead, when placed in proper 
conditions resume their vitality. It may be said 
that these creatures are not dead, but merely in a 
condition of suspended vitality. That, however, is 
only begging the question by making the incapa¬ 
city for restoration to life part of the definition of 
death. In the absence of obvious lesions of some 
of the more important organs, it is no easy matter, 
even for experts, to say that an apparently dead 
man is incapable of restoration to life; and, in 
the recorded instances of such restoration, the 
want of any conclusive evidence that the man 


200 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 


vi 


was dead is even more remarkable than the 
insufficiency of the testimony as to his coming to 
life again. 

It may be urged, however, that there is, at any 
rate, one miracle certified by all three of the 
Synoptic Gospels which really does “ imply a con¬ 
tradiction,” and is, therefore, “ impossible ” in the 
strictest sense of the word. This is the well- 
known story of the feeding of several thousand 
men, to the complete satisfaction of their hunger, 
by the distribution of a few loaves and fishes 
among them; the wondrousness of this already 
somewhat surprising performance being intensified 
by the assertion that the quantity of the fragments 
of the meal, left over, amounted to much more than 
the original store. 

Undoubtedly, if the operation is stated in its 
most general form; if it is to be supposed that a 
certain quantity, or magnitude, was divided into 
many more parts than the whole contained ; and 
that, after the subtraction of several thousands of 
such parts, the magnitude of the remainder 
amounted to more than the original magnitude, 
there does seem to be an a priori difficulty about 
accepting the proposition, seeing that it appears 
to be contradictory of the senses which we attach 
to the words “ whole ” and “ parts ” respectively. 
But this difficulty is removed if we reflect that 
we are not, in this case, dealing with magnitude 
in the abstract, or with “ whole ” and “ parts ” in 


VI 


POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 201 


their mathematical sense, but with concrete 
things, many of which are known to possess the 
power of growing, or increasing in magnitude. 
They thus furnish us with a conception of growth 
which we may, in imagination, apply to loaves 
and fishes; just as we may, in imagination, apply 
the idea of wings to the idea of a man. It must be 
admitted that a number of sheep might be fed on 
a pasture, and yet there might be more grass on 
the pasture, when the sheep left it, than there was 
at first. We may generalise this and other 
such facts into a perfectly definite conception of the 
increase of food in excess of consumption; which 
thus becomes a possibility, the limitations of 
which are to be discovered only by experience. 
Therefore, if it is asserted that cooked food has 
been made to grow in excess of rapid consumption, 
that statement cannot logically be rejected as an 
a priori impossibility, however improbable experi¬ 
ence of the capabilities of cooked food may justify 
us in holding it to be. 

On the strength of this undeniable improba¬ 
bility, however, we not only have a right to 
demand, but are morally bound to require, strong 
evidence in its favour before we even take it into 
serious consideration. But what is the evidence 
in this case? It is merely that of those three 
books, 1 which also concur in testifying to the truth 

1 The story in John vi. 5-14 is obviously derived from the 
“ five thousand ” narrative of the Synoptics. 


202 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES VI 

of the monstrous legend of the herd of swine. 
In these three books, there are five accounts of a 
“ miraculous feeding,” which fall into two groups. 
Three of the stories, obviously derived from some 
common source, state that five loaves and two 
fishes sufficed to feed five thousand persons, and 
that twelve baskets of fragments remained over. 
In the two others, also obviously derived from a 
common source, distinct from the preceding, seven 
loaves and a few small fishes are distributed to 
four thousand persons, and seven baskets of 
fragments are left. 

If we were dealing with secular records, I sup¬ 
pose no candid and competent student of history 
would entertain much doubt that the originals of 
the three stories and of the two are themselves 
merely divergent versions of some primitive story 
which existed before the three Synoptic gospels 
were compiled out of the body of traditions current 
about Jesus. This view of the case, however, is 
incompatible with a belief in the historical 
accuracy of the first and second gospels. 1 For 
these agree in making Jesus himself speak of both 
the “ four thousand ” and the “ five thousand ” 
miracle. “ When I brake the five loaves among 
the five thousand, how many baskets full of 
broken pieces took ye up ? They say unto him, 
twelve. And when the seven among the four 


1 Matthew xvi. 5-12 ; Mark viii. 14-21. 


VI 


POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 203 


thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces 
took ye up ? And they say unto him, seven.” 

Thus we are face to face with a dilemma the 
way of escape from which is not obvious. Either 
the “ four thousand ” and the “ five thousand ” 
stories are both historically true, and describe two 
separate events ; or the first and second gospels 
testify to the very words of a conversation between 
Jesus and his disciples which cannot have been 
uttered. 

My choice between these alternatives is deter¬ 
mined by no a priori speculations about the possi¬ 
bility or impossibility of such events as the feeding 
of the four or of the five thousand. But I ask myself 
the question, What evidence ought to be produced 
before I could feel justified in saying that I 
believed such an event to have occurred ? That 
question is very easily answered. Proof must be 
given (1) of the weight of the loaves and fishes at 
starting; (2) of the distribution to 4-5,000 persons, 
without any additional supply, of this quantity 
and quality of food; (3) of the satisfaction of 
these people’s appetites; (4) of the weight and 
quality of the fragments gathered up into the 
baskets. Whatever my present notions of proba¬ 
bility and improbability may be, satisfactory testi¬ 
mony under these four heads would lead me to 
believe that they were erroneous; and I should 
accept the so-called miracle as a new and unex¬ 
pected example of the possibilities of nature. 


204 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 


VI 


But when, instead of such evidence, nothing is 
produced but two sets of discrepant stories, 
originating nobody knows how or when, among 
persons who could believe as firmly in devils which 
enter pigs, I confess that my feeling is one of 
astonishment that any one should expect a reason¬ 
able man to take such testimony seriously. 

I am anxious to bring about a clear under¬ 
standing of the difference between “impossi¬ 
bilities ” and “ improbabilities,” because mistakes 
on this point lay us open to the attacks of 
ecclesiastical apologists of the type of the late 
Cardinal Newman; acute sophists, who think it 
fitting to employ their intellects, as burglars 
employ dark lanterns for the discovery of other 
people’s weak places, while they carefully keep the 
light away from their own position. 

When it is rightly stated, the Agnostic view of 
“ miracles ” is, in my judgment, unassailable. We 
are not justified in the a priori assertion that the 
order of nature, as experience has revealed it to us, 
cannot change. In arguing about the miraculous, 
the assumption is illegitimate, because it involves 
the whole point in dispute. Furthermore, it is an 
assumption which takes us beyond the range of 
our faculties. Obviously, no amount of past 
experience can warrant us in anything more than 
a correspondingly strong expectation for the 
present and future. We find, practically, that 


VI 


POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 205 


expectations, based upon careful observations of 
past events, are, as a rule, trustworthy. We 
should be foolish indeed not to follow the only guide 
we have through life. But, for all that, our highest 
and surest generalisations remain on the level of 
justifiable expectations ; that is, very high proba¬ 
bilities. For my part, I am unable to conceive of an 
intelligence shaped on the model of that of man, 
however superior it might be, which could be any 
better off than our own in this respect; that is, 
which could possess logically justifiable grounds 
for certainty about the constancy of the order of 
things, and therefore be in a position to declare 
that such and such events are impossible. Some 
of the old mythologies recognised this clearly 
enough. Beyond and above Zeus and Odin, there 
lay the unknown and inscrutable Fate which, one 
day or other, would crumple up them and the 
world they ruled to give place to a new order of 
things. 

I sincerely hope that I shall not be accused of 
Pyrrhonism, or of any desire to weaken the foun¬ 
dations of rational certainty. I have merely 
desired to point out that rational certainty is one 
thing, and talk about “ impossibilities,” or “ viola¬ 
tion of natural laws,” another. Rational certainty 
rests upon two grounds—the one that the evidence 
in favour of a given statement is as good as it can 
be ; the other that such evidence is plainly insuffi¬ 
cient. In the foimer case, the statement is to be 


206 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 


VI 


taken as true, in the latter as untrue; until some¬ 
thing arises to modify the verdict, which, however 
properly reached, may always be more or less 
wrong, the best information being never complete, 
and the best reasoning being liable to fallacy. 

To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us 
in intellectual affairs, would be about as reasonable 
as to object to live one’s life, with due thought for 
the morrow, because no man can be sure he will 
be alive an hour hence. Such are the conditions 
imposed upon us by nature, and we have to make 
the best of them. And I think that the greatest 
mistake those of us who are interested in the pro¬ 
gress of free thought can make is to overlook these 
limitations, and to deck ourselves with the dog¬ 
matic feathers which are the traditional adorn¬ 
ment of our opponents. Let us be content with 
rational certainty, leaving irrational certainties to 
those who like to muddle their minds with them. 
I cannot see my way to say that demons are im¬ 
possibilities ; but I am not more certain about any¬ 
thing, than I am that the evidence tendered in 
favour of the demonology, of which the Gadarene 
story is a typical example, is utterly valueless. I 
cannot see my way to say that it is “ impossible ” 
that the hunger of thousands of men should be 
satisfied out of the food supplied by half-a-dozen 
loaves and a fish or two; but it seems to me mon¬ 
strous that I should be asked to believe it on the 
faith of the five stories which testify to such an 


VI 


POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 207 


occurrence. It is true that the position that 
miracles are ‘‘impossible” cannot be sustained. 
But I know of nothing which calls upon me 
to qualify the grave verdict of Hume : “ There 

is not to be found, in all history, any 
miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, 
of such unquestioned goodness, education, and 
learning as to secure us against all delusion in 
themselves; of such undoubted integrity as to 
place them beyond all suspicion of any design to 
deceive others; of such credit and reputation in 
the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal 
to lose in case of their being detected in any 
falsehood ; and at the same time attesting facts, 
performed in such a public manner, and in so 
celebrated a part of the world, as to render the 
detection unavoidable: all which circumstances 
are requisite to give us a full assurance in the testi¬ 
mony of men? 1 

The preceding paper called forth the following criticism signed 
“ Agnosco,” to which I append my reply :— 

While agreeing generally with Professor Huxley’s remarks 
respecting miracles, in “ The Agnostic Annual for 1892,” it has 
seemed to me that one of his arguments at least requires quali¬ 
fication. The Professor, in maintaining that so-called miraculous 
events are possible, although the evidence adduced is not 
sufficient to render them probable, refers to the possibility of 
changing water into wine by molecular re-composition. He 
tells us that, “ if carbon can be got out of hydrogen or oxygen, 
the conversion of water into wine comes within range of scientific 
possibility.” But in maintaining that miracles (so-called) have 

1 Hume, Inquiry , sec. x., part ii. 

129 




208 POSSIBILITIES AND IMPOSSIBILITIES 


vi 


a prospective possibility, Professor Huxley loses sight—at least, 
so it appears to me—of the question of their retrospective possi¬ 
bility. For, if it requires a certain degree of knowledge and 
experience, yet far from having been attained, to perform those 
acts which have been called miraculous, it is not only improb¬ 
able, but impossible likewise, that they should have been done 
by men whose knowledge and experience were considerably 
less than our own. It has seemed to me, in fact, that this 
question of the retrospective possibility of miracles is more im¬ 
portant to us Rationalists, and, for the matter of that, to 
Christians also, than the question of their prospective possibility, 
with which Professor Huxley’s article mainly deals. Perhaps 
the Professor himself could help those of us who think so, by 
giving us his opinion. 


I am not sure that I fully appreciate the point raised by 
“ Agnosco,” nor the distinction between the prospective and the 
retrospective ‘.‘possibility” of such a miracle as the conversion 
of water into wine. If we may contemplate such an event as 
“possible” in London in the year 1900, it must, in the same 
sense, have been “possible” in the year 30 (or thereabouts) at 
Cana in Galilee. If I should live so long, I shall take great 
interest in the announcement of the performance of this opera¬ 
tion, say, nine years hence ; and, if there is no objection raised 
by chemical experts, I shall accept the fact that the feat has 
been performed, without hesitation. But I shall have no more 
ground for believing the Cana story than I had before ; simply 
because the evidence in its favour will remain, for me, exactly 
where it is. Possible or impossible, that evidence is worth 
nothing. To leave the safe ground of “ no evidence” for specu¬ 
lations about impossibilities, consequent upon the want of 
scientific knowledge of the supposed workers of miracles, appears 
to me to be a mistake ; especially in view of the orthodox con¬ 
tention that they possessed supernatural power and supernatural 
knowledge. T. H. Huxley. 


vn 

AGNOSTICISM 

[1889] 

Within the last few months, the public haa 
received much and varied information on the 
subject of agnostics, their tenets, and even their 
future. Agnosticism exercised the orators of the 
Church Congress at Manchester. 1 It has been 
furnished with a set of “ articles ” fewer, but not 
less rigid, and certainly not less consistent than 
the thirty-nine ; its nature has been analysed, 
and its future severely predicted by the most 
eloquent of that prophetical school whose Samuel 
is Auguste Comte. It may still be a question, 
however, whether the public is as much the wiser 
as might be expected, considering all the trouble 
that has been taken to enlighten it. Not only 
are the three accounts of the agnostic position 
sadly out of harmony with one another, but I 

1 See the Official Report of the Church Congress held at 
Manchester, October 1888, pp. 253, 254. 


210 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


propose to show cause for my belief that all three 
must be seriously questioned by any one who 
employs the term “ agnostic ” in the sense in 
which it was originally used. The learned 
Principal of King’s College, who brought the 
topic of Agnosticism before the Church Congress, 
took a short and easy way of settling the 
business:— 

But if tliis be so, for a man to urge, as an escape from this 
article of belief, that he has no means of a scientific knowledge 
of the unseen world, or of the future, is irrelevant. His differ¬ 
ence from Christians lies not in the fact that he has no know¬ 
ledge of these things, but that he does not believe the authority 
on which they are stated. He may prefer to call himself an 
Agnostic ; but his real name is an older one—he is an infidel; 
that is to say, an unbeliever. The word infidel, perhaps, carries 
an unpleasant significance. Perhaps it is right that it should. 
It is, and it ought to be, an unpleasant thing for a man to have to 
say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus Christ. 1 

So much of Dr. Wace’s address either explicitly 
or implicitly concerns me, that I take upon 
myself to deal with it; but, in so doing, it must 
be understood that I speak for myself alone. I 
am not aware that there is any sect of Agnostics; 

1 [In this place and in the eleventh essay, there are references 
to the late Archbishop of York which are of no importance to 
my main argument, and which I have expunged because I desire 
to obliterate the traces of a temporary misunderstanding with a 
man of rare ability, candour, and wit, for whom I entertained a 
great liking and no less respect. I rejoice to think now of 
the (then) Bishop’s cordial hail the first time we met after our 
little skirmish, “Well, is it to be peace or war ?” I replied, 
‘ ‘ A little of both. ” But there was only peace when we parted, 
and ever after.] 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


211 


and if there be, I am not its acknowledged 
prophet or pope. I desire to leave to the Comtists 
the entire monopoly of the manufacture of imi¬ 
tation ecclesiasticism. 

Let us calmly and dispassionately consider Dr. 
Wace’s appreciation of agnosticism. The agnos¬ 
tic, according to his view, is a person who says he 
has no means of attaining a scientific knowledge 
of the unseen world or of the future; by which 
somewhat loose phraseology Dr. Wace presumably 
means the theological unseen world and future. 
I cannot think this description happy, either in 
form or substance, but for the present it may 
pass. Dr. Wace continues, that is not “ his 
difference from Christians.” Are there th'en any 
Christians who say that they know nothing about 
the unseen world and the future ? I was ignorant 
of the fact, but I am ready to accept it on the 
authority of a professional theologian, and I 
proceed to Dr. Wace’s next proposition. 

The real state of the case, then, is that the 
agnostic “ does not believe the authority ” on 
which “these things” are stated, which authority 
is Jesus Christ. He is simply an old-fashioned 
“ infidel ” who is afraid to own to his right name. 
As “ Presbyter is priest writ large,” so is “ ag¬ 
nostic ” the mere Greek equivalent for the Latin 
“ infidel.” There is an attractive simplicity about 
this solution of the problem; and it has that 
advantage of being somewhat offensive to the 


212 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


persons attacked, which is so dear to the less 
refined sort of controversialist. The agnostic 
says, “ I cannot find good evidence that so and so 
is true.” “ Ah,” says his adversary, seizing his 
opportunity, “then you declare that Jesus Christ 
was untruthful, for he said so and so; ” a very 
telling method of rousing prejudice. But suppose 
that the value of the evidence as to what Jesus 
may have said and done, and as to the exact 
nature and scope of his authority, is just that 
which the agnostic finds it most difficult to deter¬ 
mine. If I venture to doubt that the Duke of 
Wellington gave the command “ Up, Guards, and 
at ’em! ” at Waterloo, I do not think that even 
Dr. Wace would accuse me of disbelieving the 
Duke. Yet it would be just as reasonable to do 
this as to accuse any one of denying what Jesus 
said, before the preliminary question as to what 
he did say is settled. 

Now, the question as to what Jesus really said 
and did is strictly a scientific problem, which is 
capable of solution by no other methods than 
those practised by the historian and the literary 
critic. It is a problem of immense difficulty, 
which has occupied some of the best heads in 
Europe for the last century; and it is only of late 
years that their investigations have begun to con¬ 
verge towards one conclusion . 1 

1 Dr. Wace tells us, “It may be asked how far we can rely on 
the accounts we possess of our Lord’s teaching on these subjects. ” 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


213 


That kind of faith which Dr. Wace describes 
and lauds is of no use here. Indeed, he himself 
takes pains to destroy its evidential value. 

“ What made the Mahommedan world ? Trust 
and faith in the declarations and assurances of 
Mahommed. And what made the Christian 
world ? Trust and faith in the declarations and 
assurances of Jesus Christ and His Apostles” 
(l. c. p. 253). The triumphant tone of this 
imaginary catechism leads me to suspect that its 
author has hardly appreciated its full import. 
Presumably, Dr. Wace regards Mahommed as an 
unbeliever, or, to use the term which he prefers, 
infidel; and considers that his assurances have 
given rise to a vast delusion which has led, and is 
leading, millions of men straight to everlasting 
punishment. And this ber-g so, the “ Trust and 
faith ” which have “ made the Mahommedan 
world,” in just the same sense as they have 


And he seems to think the question appropriately answered by 
the assertion that it “ought to be regarded as settled by M. 
Renan’s practical surrender of the adverse case.” I thought I 
knew M. Renan’s works pretty well, but I have contrived to 
miss this “practical” (I wish Dr. Wace had defined the scope 
of that useful adjective) surrender. However, as Dr. Wace can 
find no difficulty in pointing out the passage of M. Renan’s 
writings, by which he feels justified in making his statement, I 
shall wait for further enlightenment, contenting myself, for the 
present, with remarking that if M. Renan were to retract and 
do penance in Notre-Dame to-morrow for any contributions to 
Biblical criticism that may be specially his property, the main 
results of that criticism, as they are set forth in the works of 
Strauss, Baur, Reuss, and Yolkmar, for example, would not be 
sensibly affected. 


214 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


“ made the Christian world,” must he trust and 
faith in falsehood. No man who has studied 
history, or even attended to the occurrences of 
everyday life, can doubt the enormous practical 
value of trust and faith; but as little will he be 
inclined to deny that this practical value has not 
the least relation to the reality of the objects of 
that trust and faith. In examples of patient 
constancy of faith and of unswerving trust, the 
“ Acta Martyrum ” do not excel the annals of 
Babism. 1 

The discussion upon which we have now 
entered goes so thoroughly to the root of the 
whole matter; the question of the day is so 
completely, as the author of “ Robert Elsmere ** 
says, the value of testimony, that I shall offer no 
apology for following it out somewhat in detail; 
and, by way of giving substance to the argument, 
I shall base what I have to say upon a case, 
the consideration of which lies strictly within the 
province of natural science, and of that particular 
part of it known as the physiology and pathology 
of the nervous system. 

I find, in the second Gospel (chap, v.), a state¬ 
ment, to all appearance intended to have the 
same evidential value as any other contained in 

1 [See De Gobineau, Les Religions et les Philosophies dans 
VAsie Centrale; and the recently published work of Mr. E. G. 
Browne, The Episode of the Bab.] 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


215 


that history. It is the well-known story of the 
devils who were cast out of a man, and ordered, 
or permitted, to enter into a herd of swine, to the 
great loss and damage of the innocent Gerasene, 
or Gadarene, pig owners. There can be no doubt 
that the narrator intends to convey to his readers 
his own conviction that this casting out and 
entering in were effected by the agency of Jesus 
of Nazareth; that, by speech and action, Jesus 
enforced this conviction; nor does any inkling 
of the legal and moral difficulties of the case 
manifest itself. 

On the other hand, everything that I know of 
physiological and pathological science leads me to 
entertain a very strong conviction that the pheno¬ 
mena ascribed to possession are as purely natural 
as those which constitute small-pox; everything 
that I know of anthropology leads me to think 
that the belief in demons and demoniacal posses¬ 
sion is a mere survival of a once universal super¬ 
stition, and that its persistence, at the present 
time, is pretty much in the inverse ratio of the 
general instruction, intelligence, and sound judg¬ 
ment of the population among whom it prevails. 
Everything that I know of law and justice con¬ 
vinces me that the wanton destruction of other 
people’s property is a misdemeanour of evil 
example. Again, the study of history, and 
especially of that of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and 
seventeenth centuries, leaves no shadow of doubt 


216 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


on my mind that the belief in the reality of 
possession and of witchcraft, justly based, alike 
by Catholics and Protestants, upon this and innu¬ 
merable other passages in both the Old and New 
Testaments, gave rise, through the special in¬ 
fluence of Christian ecclesiastics, to the most 
horrible persecutions and judicial murders of 
thousands upon thousands of innocent men, 
women, and children. And when I reflect that 
the record of a plain and simple declaration upon 
such an occasion as this, that the belief in witch¬ 
craft and possession is wicked nonsense, would 
have rendered the long agony of mediaeval 
humanity impossible, I am prompted to reject, as 
dishonouring, the supposition that such declar¬ 
ation was withheld out of condescension to 
popular error. 

“Come forth, thou unclean spirit, out of the 
man ” (Mark v. 8), 1 are the words attributed to 
Jesus. If I declare, as I have no hesitation in 
doing, that I utterly disbelieve in the existence of 
“ unclean spirits,” and, consequently, in the possi¬ 
bility of their “ coming forth ” out of a man, I 
suppose that Dr. Wace will tell me I am 
disregarding the testimony “ of our Lord.” 
For, if these words were really used, the most 
resourceful of reconcilers can hardly venture 
to affirm that they are compatible with a dis¬ 
belief “in these thiugs.” As the learned and 

1 Here, as always, tlie revised version is cited. 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


217 


fair-minded, as well as orthodox, Dr. Alexander 
remarks, in an editorial note to the article 
“ Demoniacs/' in the “ Biblical Cyclopaedia ” (vol, 
i. p. 664, note) :— 

... On the lowest grounds on which onr Lord and His 
Apostles can be placed they must, at least, he regarded as honcxt 
men. Now, though honest speech does not require that words 
should he used always and only in their etymological sense, it 
does require that they should not be used so as to affirm what 
the speaker knows to be false. Whilst, therefore, our Lord and 
His Apostles might use the word datfiovl^aQai, or the phrase, 
haifj.6viov ex* 1 ?, as a popular description of certain diseases, 
without giving in to the belief which lay at the source of such a 
mode of expression, they could not speak of demons entering 
into a man, or being cast out of him, without pledging them¬ 
selves to the belief of an actual possession of the man by the 
demons. (Campbell, Prel. Diss. vi. 1, 10.) If, consequently, 
they did not hold this belief, they spoke not as honest men. 

The story which we are considering does not 
rest on the authority of the second Gospel alone. 
The third confirms the second, especially in the 
matter of commanding the unclean spirit to come 
out of the man (Luke viii. 29); and, although 
the first Gospel either gives a different version of 
the same story, or tells another of like kind, the 
essential point remains: “ If thou cast us out, 
send us away into the herd of swine. And He 
said unto them : Go ! ” (Matt. viii. 31, 32). 

If the concurrent testimony of the three 
synoptics, then, is really sufficient to do away 
with all rational doubt as to a matter of fact of 
the utmost practical and speculative importance— 


218 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


belief or disbelief in which may affect, and has 
affected, mens lives and their conduct towards 
other men, in the most serious way—then I am 
bound to believe that Jesus implicitly affirmed 
himself to possess a “ knowledge of the unseen 
world,” which afforded full confirmation of the 
belief in demons and possession current among 
his contemporaries. If the story is true, the 
mediaeval theory of the invisible world may be, 
and probably is, quite correct; and the witch- 
finders, from Sprenger to Hopkins and Mather, 
are much-maligned men. 

On the other hand, humanity, noting the 
frightful consequences of this belief; common 
sense, observing the futility of the evidence on 
which it is based, in all cases that have been 
properly investigated; science, more and more 
seeing its way to inclose all the phenomena of 
so-called “ possession ” within the domain of 
pathology, so far as they are not to be relegated 
to that of the police—all these powerful influences 
concur in warning us, at our peril, against 
accepting the belief without the most careful 
scrutiny of the authority on which it rests. 

I can discern no escape from this dilemma: 
either Jesus said what he is reported to have 
said, or he did not. In the former case, it is in¬ 
evitable that his authority on matters connected 
with the “ unseen world ” should be roughly 
shaken; in the latter, the blow falls upon the 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


219 


authority of the synoptic Gospels. If their report 
on a matter of such stupendous and far-reaching 
practical import as this is untrustworthy, how can 
we be sure of its trustworthiness in other cases ? 
The favourite “ earth,” in which the hard-pressed 
reconciler takes refuge, that the Bible does not 
profess to teach science , 1 is stopped in this 
instance. For the question of the existence of 
demons and of possession by them, though it lies 
strictly within the province of science, is also of 
the deepest moral and religious significance. If 
physical and mental disorders are caused by de¬ 
mons, Gregory of Tours and his contemporaries 
rightly considered that relics and exorcists were 
more useful than doctors; the gravest questions 
arise as to the legal and moral responsibilities of 
persons inspired by demoniacal impulses; and our 
whole conception of the universe and of our 


1 Does any one really mean to say that there is any internal or 
external criterion by which the reader of a biblical statement, in 
which scientific matter is contained, is enabled to judge whether 
it is to be taken au serieux or not ? Is the account of the 
Deluge, accepted as true in the New Testament, less precise and 
specific than that of the call of Abraham, also accepted as true 
therein ? By what mark does the story of the feeding with 
manna in the wilderness, which involves some very curious 
scientific problems, show that it is meant merely for edification, 
while the story of the inscription of the Law on stone by the 
hand of Jahveh is literally true ? If the story of the Fall is not 
the true record of an historical occurrence, what becomes of 
Pauline theology ? Yet the story of the Fall as directly con¬ 
flicts with probability, and is as devoid of trustworthy evidence, 
as that of the Creation or that of the Deluge, with which it 
forms an harmoniously legendary series. 


220 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


relations to it becomes totally different from what 
it would be on the contrary hypothesis. 

The theory of life of an average mediaeval 
Christian was as different from that of an average 
nrneteenth-century Englishman as that of a West 
African negro is now, in these respects. The 
modern world is slowly, but surely, shaking off 
these and other monstrous survivals of savage 
delusions ; and, whatever happens, it will not re¬ 
turn to that wallowing in the mire. Until the 
contrary is proved, I venture to doubt whether, at 
this present moment, any Protestant theologian, 
who has a reputation to lose, will say that he 
believes the Gadarene story. 

The choice then lies between discrediting those 
who compiled the Gospel biographies and dis¬ 
believing the Master, whom they, simple souls, 
thought to honour by preserving such traditions 
of the exercise of his authority over Satan’s 
invisible world. This is the dilemma. No deep 
scholarship, nothing but a knowledge of the 
revised version (on which it is to be supposed 
all that mere scholarship can do has been done), 
with the application thereto of the commonest 
canons of common sense, is needful to enable us 
to make a choice between its alternatives. It is 
hardly doubtful that the story, as told in the first 
Gospel, is merel} T a version of that told in the 
second and third. Nevertheless, the discrepancies 
are serious and irreconcilable; and, on this ground 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


221 


alone, a suspension of judgment, at the least, is 
called for. But there is a great deal more to be 
said. From the dawn of scientific biblical criti¬ 
cism until the present day, the evidence against 
the long-cherished notion that the three synoptic 
Gospels are the works of three independent 
authors, each prompted by Divine inspiration, 
has steadily accumulated, until, at the present 
time, there is no visible escape from the con¬ 
clusion that each of the three is a compilation 
consisting of a groundwork common to all three—• 
the threefold tradition; and of a superstructure, 
consisting, firstly, of matter common to it with 
one of the others, and, secondly, of matter special 
to each. The use of the terms “ groundwork ” 
and “ superstructure ” by no means implies that 
the latter must be of later date than the former. 
On the contrary, some parts of it may be, and 
probably are, older than some parts of the 
groundwork. 1 

The story of the Gadarene swine belongs. to 
the groundwork ; at least, the essential part of it, 
in which the belief in demoniac possession is 
expressed, does; and therefore the compilers of 
the first, second, and third Gospels, whoever they 

1 See, for an admirable discussion of the whole subject, Dr, 
Abbott’s article on the Gospels in the Encyclopaedia Britannic,a ; 
and the remarkable monograph by Professor Volkmar, Jesus 
Nazarcnus tend die erste christliche Zeit (1882). Whether we 
agree with the conclusions of these writers or not, the method of 
critical investigation which they adopt is unimpeachable. 


222 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


were, certainly accepted that belief (which, indeed, 
was universal among both Jews and pagans at 
that time), and attributed it to Jesus. 

What, then, do we know about the originator, 
or originators, of this groundwork—of that three¬ 
fold tradition which all three witnesses (in Paley’s 
phrase) agree upon—that we should allow their 
mere statements to outweigh the counter argu¬ 
ments of humanity, of common sense, of exact 
science, and to imperil the respect which all 
would be glad to be able to render to their 
Master ? 

Absolutely nothing . 1 There is no proof, no¬ 
thing more than a fair presumption, that any one 
of the Gospels existed, in the state in which we 
find it in the authorised version of the Bible, 
before the second century, or, in other words, 
sixty or seventy years after the events recorded. 
And, between that time and the date of the 
oldest extant manuscripts of the Gospels, there is 
no telling what additions and alterations and 
interpolations may have been made. It may be 
said that this is all mere speculation, but it is a 
good deal more. As competent scholars and 
honest men, our revisers have felt compelled to 
point out that such things have happened even 

1 Notwithstanding the hard words shot at me from behind 
the hedge of anonymity by a writer in a recent number of the 
Quarterly Review , I repeat, without the slightest fear of refuta¬ 
tion, that the four Gospels, as they have come to us, are the 
work of unknown writers. 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


223 


since the date of the oldest known manuscripts. 
The oldest two copies of the second Gospel end 
with the 8th verse of the 16th chapter; the 
remaining twelve verses are spurious, and it is 
noteworthy that the maker of the addition has not 
hesitated to introduce a speech in which Jesus 
promises his disciples that “in My name shall 
they cast out devils.” 

The other passage “ rejected to the margin ” is 
still more instructive. It is that touching 
apologue, with its profound ethical sense, of the 
woman taken in adultery—which, if internal 
evidence were an infallible guide, might well be 
affirmed to be a typical example of the teachings 
of Jesus. Yet, say the revisers, pitilessly, “ Most 
of the ancient authorities emit John vii. 53—viii. 
11.” Now let any reasonable man ask himself 
this question. If, after an approximate settle¬ 
ment of the canon of the New Testament, and 
even later than the fourth and fifth centuries, 
literary fabricators had the skill and the audacity 
to make such additions and interpolations as 
these, what may they have done when no one 
had thought of a canon; when oral tradition, still 
unfixed, was regarded as more valuable than such 
written records as may have existed in the latter 
portion of the first century? Or, to take the 
other alternative, if those who gradually settled 
the canon did not know of the existence of the 
oldest codices which have come down to us ; or if, 
130 


224 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


knowing them, they rejected their authority, what 
is to be thought of their competency as critics of 
the text ? 

People who object to free criticism of the 
Christian Scriptures forget that they are what 
they are in virtue of very free criticism ; unless 
the advocates of inspiration are prepared to affirm 
that the majority of influential ecclesiastics during 
several centuries were safeguarded against error. 
For, even granting that some books of the period 
were inspired, they were certainly few amongst 
many; and those who selected the canonical 
books, unless they themselves were also inspired, 
must be regarded in the light of mere critics, and, 
from the evidence they have left of their intel¬ 
lectual habits, very uncritical critics. When one 
thinks that such delicate questions as those 
involved fell into the hands of men like Papias 
(who believed in the famous millenarian grape 
story); of Irenseus with his “ reasons ” for the 
existence of only four Gospels; and of such calm 
and dispassionate judges as Tertullian, with his 
“ Credo quia impossible ” : the marvel is that the 
selection which constitutes our New Testament is 
as free as it is from obviously objectionable matter. 
The apocryphal Gospels certainly deserve to be 
apocryphal; but one may suspect that a little 
more critical discrimination would have enlarged 
the Apocrypha not inconsiderably. 

At this point a very obvious objection arises 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


225 


and deserves full and candid consideration. It 
may be said that critical scepticism carried to the 
length suggested is historical pyrrhonism; that if 
we are altogether to discredit an ancient or a 
modern historian, because he has assumed fabulous 
matter to be true, it will be as well to give up 
paying any attention to history. It may be said, 
and with great justice, that Eginhard’s “Life 
of Charlemagne” is none the less trustworthy 
because of the astounding revelation of credulity, 
of lack of judgment, and even of respect for the 
eighth commandment, which he has unconsciously 
made in the “ History of the Translation of the 
Blessed Martyrs Marcellinus and Paul.” Or, to go 
no further back than the last number of the 
Nineteenth Century, surely that excellent lady, Miss 
Strickland, is not to be refused all credence, because 
of the myth about the second James’s remains, 
which she seems to have unconsciously invented. 

Of course this is perfectly true. I am afraid 
there is no man alive whose witness could be 
accepted, if the condition precedent were proof 
that he had never invented and promulgated a 
myth. In the minds of all of us there are little 
places here and there, like the indistinguishable 
spots on a rock which give foothold to moss or 
stonecrop; on which, if the germ of a myth fall, it 
is certain to grow, without in the least degree 
affecting our accuracy or truthfulness elsewhere. 
Sir Walter Scott knew that he could not repeat a 


226 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


story without, as he said, “ giving it a new hat 
and stick.” Most of us differ from Sir Walter 
only in not knowing about this tendency of the 
mythopoeic faculty to break out unnoticed. But 
it is also perfectly true that the mythopoeic faculty 
is not equally active in all minds, nor in all 
regions and under all conditions of the same mind. 
David Hume was certainly not so liable to 
temptation as the Venerable Bede, or even as 
some recent historians who could be mentioned; 
and the most imaginative of debtors, if he owes 
five pounds, never makes an obligation to pay a 
hundred out of it. The rule of common sense is 
primd facie to trust a witness in all matters, in 
which neither his self-interest, his passions, his 
prejudices, nor that love of the marvellous, which 
is inherent to a greater or less degree in all man¬ 
kind, are strongly concerned ; and, when they are 
involved, to require corroborative evidence in exact 
proportion to the contravention of probability by 
the thing testified. 

Now, in the Gadarene affair, I do not think I 
am unreasonably sceptical, if I say that the 
existence of demons who can be transferred from 
a man to a pig, does thus contravene probability. 
Let me be perfectly candid. I admit I have no 
a priori objection to offer. There are physical 
things, such as tcenice and trichinae, which can be 
transferred from men to pigs, and vice versd , and 
which do undoubtedly produce most diabolical 


AGNOSTICISM 


227 


VII 

and deadly effects on both. For anything I can 
absolutely prove to the contrary, there may be 
spiritual things capable of the same transmigra¬ 
tion, with like effects. Moreover I am bound to 
add that perfectly truthful persons, for whom I 
have the greatest respect, believe in stories about 
spirits of the present day, quite as improbable as 
that we are considering. 

So I declare, as plainly as I can, that I am unable 
to show cause why these transferable devils should 
not exist; nor can I deny that, not merely the 
whole Roman Church, but many Wacean “infidels” 
of no mean repute, do honestly and firmly believe 
that the activity of such like demonic beings is in 
full swing in this year of grace 1889. 

Nevertheless, as good Bishop Butler says, 
“ probability is the guide of life; ” and it seems to 
me that this is just one of the cases in which the 
canon of credibility and testimony, which I have 
ventured to lay down, has full force. So that, 
with the most entire respect for many (by no 
means for all) of our witnesses for the truth of 
demonology, ancient and modern, I conceive their 
evidence on this particular matter to be ridicu¬ 
lously insufficient to warrant their conclusion. 1 

1 Their arguments, in the long run, are always reducible to 
one form. Otherwise trustworthy witnesses affirm that such and 
such events took place. These events are inexplicable, except 
the agency of “ spirits” is admitted. Therefore “ spirits ” were 
the cause of the phenomena. 

And the heads of the reply are always the same. Remembej 


228 


AGNOSTICISM 


vn 

After what has been said, I do not think that 
any sensible man, unless he happen to be angry, 
will accuse me of “ contradicting the Lord and His 
Apostles ” if I reiterate my total disbelief in the 
whole Gadarene story. But, if that story is dis¬ 
credited, all the other stories of demoniac posses¬ 
sion fall under suspicion. And if the belief in 
demons and demoniac possession, which forms the 
sombre background of the whole picture of primi¬ 
tive Christianity, presented to us in the New 
Testament, is shaken, what is to be said, in any 
case, of the uncorroborated testimony of the 
Gospels with respect to “ the unseen world ” ? 

I am not aware that I have been influenced by 
any more bias in regard to the Gadarene story 
than I have been in dealing with other cases of 
like kind the investigation of which has interested 
me. I was brought up in the strictest school of 
evangelical orthodoxy; and when I was old enough 
to think for myself, I started upon my journey of 
inquiry with little doubt about the general truth 
of what I had been taught; and with that feeling 


Goethe’s aphorism : “ Alles factische ist schon Theorie.” Trust¬ 
worthy-witnesses are constantly deceived, or deceive themselves, 
in their interpretation of sensible phenomena. No one can 
prove that the sensible phenomena, in these cases, conld be 
caused only by the agency of spirits : and there is abundant 
ground for believing that they may be produced in other ways. 
Therefore, the utmost that can be reasonably asked for, on the 
evidence as it stands, is suspension of judgment. And, on the 
necessity for even that suspension, reasonable men may differ, 
according to their views of probability. 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


220 


of the unpleasantness of being called an “ infidel ” 
which, we are told, is so right and proper. Near 
my journey’s end, I find myself in a condition of 
something more than mere doubt about these 
matters. 

In the course of other inquiries, I have had to 
do with fossil remains which looked quite plain at 
a distance, and became more and more indistinct 
as I tried to define their outline by close inspec¬ 
tion. There was something there—something 
which, if I could win assurance about it, might 
mark a new epoch in the history of the earth; 
but, study as long as I might, certainty eluded my 
grasp. So has it been with me in my efforts to 
define the grand figure of Jesus as it lies in the 
primary strata of Christian literature. Is he the 
kindly, peaceful Christ depicted in the Catacombs ? 
Or is he the stern Judge who frowns above the 
altar of SS. Cos mas and Damianus ? Or can he 
be rightly represented by the bleeding ascetic, 
broken down by physical pain, of too many 
mediaeval pictures? Are we to accept the Jesus 
of the second, or the Jesus of the fourth Gospel, 
as the true Jesus ? What did he really say and 
do; and how much that is attributed to him, in 
speech and action, is the embroidery of the various 
parties into which his followers tended to split 
themselves within twenty years of his death, 
when even the threefold tradition was only 
nascent ? 


230 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


If any one will answer these questions for me 
with something more to the point than feeble talk 
about the “ cowardice of agnosticism,” I shall be 
deeply his debtor. Unless and until they are 
satisfactorily answered, I say of agnosticism in 
this matter, suis, et fy reste” 

But, as we have seen, it is asserted that I have 
no business to call myself an agnostic ; that, if I 
am not a Christian I am an infidel; and that I 
ought to call myself by that name of “ unpleasant 
significance.” Well, I do not care much what I 
am called by other people, and if I had at my side 
all those who, since the Christian era, have been 
called infidels by other folks, I could not desire 
better company. If these are my ancestors, I pre¬ 
fer, with the old Frank, to be with them wherever 
they are. But there are several points in Dr. 
Wace’s contention which must be elucidated 
before I can even think of undertaking to carry 
out his wishes. I must, for instance, know what 
a Christian is. Now what is a Christian? By 
whose authority is the signification of that term 
defined ? Is there any doubt that the immediate 
followers of Jesus, the “ sect of the Nazarenes,” 
were strictly orthodox Jews differing from other 
Jews not more than the Sadducees, the Pharisees, 
and the Essenes differed from one another; in fact, 
only in the belief that the Messiah, for whom the 
rest of their nation waited, had come ? Was not 
their chief, “James, the brother of the Lord,” 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


231 


reverenced alike by Sadducee, Pharisee, and 
Nazarene ? At the famous conference which, 
according to the Acts, took place at Jerusalem, 
does not James declare that “myriads” of Jews, 
who, by that time, had become Nazarenes, were 
“ all zealous for the Law ” ? Was not the name 
of “ Christian ” first used to denote the converts to 
the doctrine promulgated by Paul and Barnabas at 
Antioch ? Does the subsequent history of Chris¬ 
tianity leave any doubt that, from this time forth, 
the “ little rift within the lute ” caused by the new 
teaching, developed, if not inaugurated, at Antioch, 
grew wider and wider, until the two types of doc¬ 
trine irreconcilably diverged ? Did not the primi¬ 
tive Nazarenism, or Ebionism, develop into the 
Nazarenism, and Ebionism, and Elkasaitism of 
later ages, and final ly^ die out in obscurity and 
condemnation, as damnable heresy; while the 
younger doctrine throve and pushed out its shoots 
into that endless variety of sects, of which the three 
strongest survivors are the Roman and Greek 
Churches and modern Protestantism ? 

Singular state of things ! If I were to profess 
the doctrine which was held by “James, the 
brother of the Lord,” and by every one of the 
“ myriads ” of his followers and co-religionists in 
Jerusalem up to twenty or thirty years after the 
Crucifixion (and one knows not how much later at 
Pella), I should be condemned, with unanimity, as 
an ebionising heretic by the Roman, Greek, and 


232 


AGNOSTICISM 


Til 


Protestant Churches ! And, probably, this hearty 
and unanimous condemnation of the creed, held by 
those who were in the closest personal relation 
with their Lord, is almost the only point upon 
which they would be cordially of one mind. On 
the other hand, though I hardly dare imagine 
such a thing, I very much fear that the “ pillars ” 
of the primitive Hierosolymitan Church would 
have considered Dr. Wace an infidel. No one can 
read the famous second chapter of Galatians and 
the book of Revelation without seeing how nar¬ 
row was even Paul’s escape from a similar fate. 
And, if ecclesiastical history is to be trusted, the 
thirty-nine articles, be they right or wrong, 
diverge from the primitive doctrine of the Naza- 
renes vastly more than even Pauline Christianity 
did. 

But, further than this, I have great difficulty 
in assuring myself that even James, “ the brother 
of the Lord,” and his “myriads” of Nazarenes, 
properly represented the doctrines of their 
Master. For it is constantly asserted by our 
modern “ pillars ” that one of the chief features of 
the work of Jesus was the instauration of Religion 
by the abolition of what our sticklers for articles 
and liturgies, with unconscious humour, call the 
narrow restrictions of the Law. Yet, if James 
knew this, how could the bitter controversy with 
Paul have arisen; and why did not one or 
the other side quote any of the various sayings of 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


233 


Jesus, recorded in the Gospels, which directly hear 
on the question—sometimes, apparently, in oppo¬ 
site directions ? 

So, if I am asked to call myself an “ infidel,” I 
reply: To what doctrine do you ask me to be 
faithful ? Is it that contained in the Nicene and 
the Athanasian Creeds ? My firm belief is that 
the Nazarenes, say of the year 40, headed by 
James, would have stopped their ears and thought 
worthy of stoning the audacious man who pro¬ 
pounded it to them. Is it contained in the so- 
called Apostles’ Creed ? I am pretty sure that even 
that would have created a recalcitrant commotion 
at Pella in the year 70, among the Nazarenes of 
Jerusalem, who had fled from the soldiers of Titus. 
And yet, if the unadulterated tradition of the 
teachings of “the Nazarene” were to be found 
anywhere, it surely should have been amidst those 
not very aged disciples who may have heard them 
as they were delivered. 

Therefore, however sorry I may be to be unable 
to demonstrate that, if necessary, I should not be 
afraid to call myself an “ infidel,” I cannot do it. 
“ Infidel ” is a term of reproach, which Christians 
and Mahommedans, in their modesty, agree to 
apply to those who differ from them. If he had 
only thought of it, Dr. Wace might have used the 
term “ miscreant,” which, with the same etymo¬ 
logical signification, has the advantage of being 
still more “ unpleasant ” to the persons to whom 


234 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


it is applied. But why should a man be expected 
to call himself a “ miscreant ” or an “ infidel ” ? 
That St. Patrick “had two birthdays because he 
was a twin ” is a reasonable and intelligible utter¬ 
ance beside that of the man who should declare 
himself to be an infidel, on the ground of denying 
his own belief. It may be logically, if not ethi¬ 
cally, defensible that a Christian should call a 
Mahommedan an infidel and vice versd; but, on 
Dr. Wace’s principles, both ought to call them¬ 
selves infidels, because each applies the term to 
the other. 

Now I am afraid that all the Mahommedan world 
would agree in reciprocating that appellation to 
Dr. Wace himself. I once visited the Hazar 
Mosque, the great University of Mahommedanism, 
in Cairo, in ignorance of the fact that I was un¬ 
provided with proper authority. A swarm of 
angry undergraduates, as I suppose I ought to 
call them, came buzzing about me and my guide ; 
and if I had known Arabic, I suspect that “ dog 
of an infidel ” would have been by no means the 
most “ unpleasant ” of the epithets showered upon 
me, before I could explain and apologise for the 
mistake. If I had had the pleasure of Dr. Wace’s 
company on that occasion, the undiscriminative 
followers of the Prophet would, I am afraid, have 
made no difference between us; not even if they 
had known that he was the head of an orthodox 
Christian seminary. And I have not the smallest 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


235 


doubt that even one of the learned mollahs, if 
his grave courtesy would have permitted him to 
say anything offensive to men of another mode of 
belief, would have told us that he wondered we 
did not find it “ very unpleasant ” to disbelieve in 
the Prophet of Islam. 

From what precedes, I think it becomes suffi¬ 
ciently clear that Dr. Wace’s account of the origin 
of the name of “ Agnostic ” is quite wrong. In¬ 
deed, I am bound to add that very slight effort to 
discover the truth would have convinced him that, 
as a matter of fact, the term arose otherwise. I 
am loath'to go over an old story once more ; but 
more than one object which I have in view will be 
served by telling it a little more fully than it has 
yet been told. 

Looking back nearly fifty years, I see myself as 
a boy, whose education has been interrupted, and 
who, intellectually, was left, for some years, alto¬ 
gether to his own devices. At that time, I was a 
voracious and omnivorous reader; a dreamer and 
speculator of the first water, well endowed with 
that splendid courage in attacking any and every 
subject, which is the blessed compensation of 
youth and inexperience. Among the books and 
essays, on all sorts of topics from metaphysics to 
heraldry, which I read at this time, two left indel¬ 
ible impressions on my mind. One was Guizot’s 
“ History of Civilisation,” the other was Sir 
William Hamilton’s essay “ On the Philosophy of 


236 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


the Unconditioned,” which I came upon, by 
chance, in an odd volume of the “ Edinburgh 
Review.” The latter was certainly strange reading 
for a hoy, and I could not possibly have under¬ 
stood a great deal of it; 1 nevertheless, I devoured 
it with avidity, and it stamped upon my mind the 
strong conviction that, on even the most solemn 
and important of questions, men are apt to take 
cunning phrases for answers ; and that the limita¬ 
tion of our faculties, in a great number of cases, 
renders real answers to such questions, not merely 
actually impossible, hut theoretically inconceiv¬ 
able. 

Philosophy and history having laid hold of me 
in this eccentric fashion, have never loosened their 
grip. I have no pretension to be an expert in 
either subject; but the turn for philosophical and 
historical reading, which rendered Hamilton and 
Guizot attractive to me, has not only filled many 
lawful leisure hours, and still more sleepless ones, 
with the repose of changed mental occupation, but 
has not unfrequently disputed my proper work-time 
^with my liege lady, hi atural Science. In this way 
I have found it possible to cover a good deal of 
ground in the territory of philosophy; and all the 
more easily that I have never cared much about A’s 

1 Yet I must somehow have laid hold of the pith of the 
matter, for, many years afterwards, when Dean ManseFs 
Bampton Lectures were published, it seemed to me I already 
knew all that this eminently agnostic thinker had to tell me. 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


237 


or B’s opinion’s, but have rather sought to know 
what answer he had to give to the questions I had 
to put to him—-that of the limitation of possible 
knowledge being the chief. The ordinary exam¬ 
iner, with his “ State the views of So-and-so,” 
would have floored me at any time. If he had 
said what do you think about any given problem, 
I might have got on fairly well. 

The reader who has had the patience to follow 
the enforced, but unwilling, egotism of this 
veritable history (especially if his studies have led 
him in the same direction), will now see why my 
mind steadily gravitated towards the conclusions 
of Hume and Kant, so well stated by the 
latter in a sentence, which I have quoted else¬ 
where. 

“ The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all 
philosophy of pure reason is, after all, merely 
negative, since it serves not as an organon for the 
enlargement [of knowledge], but as a discipline for 
its delimitation; and, instead of discovering 
truth, has only the modest merit of preventing 
error.” 1 

When I reached intellectual maturity and 
began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a 
tlieist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; 
a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the 
more I learned and reflected, the less ready was 
the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclu- 
1 Kritik der rdnen Vernunft. Edit. Hartenstein, p. 256. 


238 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


sion that I had neither art nor part with any of 
these denominations, except the last. The one 
thing in which most of these good people were 
agreed was the one thing in which I differed from 
them. They were quite sure they had attained a 
certain “gnosis,”—had, more or less successfully, 
solved the problem of existence; while I was 
quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong 
conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, 
with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not 
think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that 
opinion. Like Dante, 

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita 
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, 

but, unlike Dante, I cannot add, 

Che la diritta via era smarrita. 

On the contrary, I had, and have, the firmest 
conviction that I never left the “ verace via ”—the 
straight road; and that this road led nowhere else 
but into the dark depths of a wild and tangled 
forest. And though I have found leopards and 
lions in the path ; though I have made abundant 
acquaintance with the hungry wolf, that “ with 
privy paw devours apace and nothing said,” as 
another great poet says of the ravening beast; and 
though no friendly spectre has even yet offered his 
guidance, I was, and am, minded to go straight on, 
until I either come out on the other side of the 


AGNOSTICISM 


239 


m 

wood, or find there is no other side to it, at least, 
none attainable by me. 

This was my situation when I had the good 
fortune to find a place among the members of that 
remarkable confraternity of antagonists, long since 
deceased, hut of green and pious memory, the Meta- 
physicial Society. Every variety of philosophical 
and theological opinion was represented there, and 
expressed itself with entire openness ; most of my 
colleages were -ists of one sort or another; and, 
however kind and friendly they might be, I, the 
man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, 
could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings 
which must have beset the historical fox when, 
after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, 
he presented himself to his normally elongated 
companions. So I took thought, and invented 
what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 
“ agnostic.” It came into my head as suggestively 
antithetic to the “ gnostic ” of Church history, who 
professed to know so much about the very things 
of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest 
opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show 
that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. To 
my great satisfaction, the term took; and when 
the Spectator had stood godfather to it, any 
suspicion in the minds of respectable people, that 
a knowledge of its parentage might have awakened 
was, of course, completely lulled. 

That is the history of the origin of the terms 
131 


240 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


" agnostic ” and “ agnosticism ” ; and it will be ob¬ 
served that it does not quite agree with the confi¬ 
dent assertion of the reverend Principal of King's 
College, that “ the adoption of the term agnostic is 
only an attempt to shift the issue, and that it in¬ 
volves a mere evasion ” in relation to the Church 
and Christianity. 1 

The last objection (I rejoice as much as my 
readers must do, that it is the last) which I have 
to take to Dr. Wace’s deliverance before the Church 
Congress arises, I am sorry to say, on a question of 
morality. 

“ It is, and it ought to be,” authoritatively de¬ 
clares this official representative of Christian 
ethics, “ an unpleasant thing for a man to have 
to say plainly that he does not believe in Jesus 
Christ ” ( l . c. p. 254). 

Whether it is so depends, I imagine, a good deal 
on whether the man was brought up in a Christian 
household or not. I do not see why it should be 
“ unpleasant ” for a Mahommedan or Buddhist to 
say so. But that “ it ought to be ” unpleasant for 
any man to say anything which he sincerely, and 
after due deliberation, believes, is, to my mind, a 
proposition of the most profoundly immoral 
character. I verily believe that the great good 
which has been effected in the world by Christian¬ 
ity has been largely counteracted by the pestilent 
1 Report of the Church Congress , Manchester, 1888, p. 252. 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


241 


doctrine on which all the Churches have insisted, 
that honest disbelief in their more or less astonish¬ 
ing creeds is a moral offence, indeed a sin of the 
deepest dye, deserving and involving the same 
future retribution as murder and robbery. If we 
could only see, in one view, the torrents of hypoc¬ 
risy and cruelty, the lies, the slaughter, the viola¬ 
tions of every obligation of humanity, which have 
flowed from this source along the course of the 
history of Christian nations, our worst imaginations 
of Hell would pale beside the vision. 

A thousand times, no ! It ought not to be un¬ 
pleasant to say that which one honestly believes or 
disbelieves. That it so constantly is painful to do 
so, is quite enough obstacle to the progress of man¬ 
kind in that most valuable of all qualities, honesty 
of word or of deed, without erecting a sad con¬ 
comitant of human weakness into something to be 
admired and cherished. The bravest of soldiers 
often, and very naturally, “ feel it unpleasant ” to 
go into action; but a court-martial which did its 
duty would make short work of the officer who 
promulgated the doctrine that his men ought to feel 
their duty unpleasant. 

I am very well aware, as I suppose most 
thoughtful people are in these times, that the 
process of breaking away from old beliefs is ex¬ 
tremely unpleasant; and I am much disposed to 
think that the encouragement, the consolation, and 
the peace afforded to earnest believers in even the 


242 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


worst forms of Christianity are of great practical 
advantage to them. What deductions must be 
made from this gain on the score of the harm done 
to the citizen by the ascetic other-worldliness of 
logical Christianity; to the ruler, by the hatred, 
malice, and all uncharitableness of sectarian 
bigotry; to the legislator, by the spirit of exclu¬ 
siveness and domination of those that count them¬ 
selves pillars of orthodoxy ; to the philosopher, by 
the restraints on the freedom of learning and 
teaching which every Church exercises, when it is 
strong enough; to the conscientious soul, by the 
introspective hunting after sins of the mint and 
cummin type, the fear of theological error, and the 
overpowering terror of possible damnation, which 
have accompanied the Churches like their shadow, 
I need not now consider; but they are assuredly 
not small. If agnostics lose heavily on the one 
side, they gain a good deal on the other. People 
who talk about the comforts of belief appear to 
forget its discomforts; they ignore the fact that 
the Christianity of the Churches is something 
more than faith in the ideal personality of Jesus, 
which they create for themselves, 'plus so much as 
can be carried into practice, without disorganising 
civil society, of the maxims of the Sermon on the 
Mount. Trip in morals or in doctrine (especially in 
doctrine), without due repentance or retractation, 
or fail to get properly baptized before you die, and 
a plebiscite of the Christians of Europe, if they 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


243 


were true to their creeds, would affirm your 
everlasting damnation by an immense majority. 

Preachers, orthodox and heterodox, din into our 
ears that the world cannot get on without faith of 
some sort. There is a sense in which that is as 
eminently as obviously true; there is another, in 
which, in my judgment, it is as eminently as 
obviously false, and it seems to me that the 
hortatory, or pulpit, mind is apt to oscillate 
between the false and the true meanings, without 
being aware of the fact. 

It is quite true that the ground of every one of 
our actions, and the validity of all our reasonings, 
rest upon the great act of faith, which leads us to 
take the experience of the past as a safe guide in 
our dealings with the present and the future. 
From the nature of ratiocination, it is obvious that 
the axioms, on which it is based, cannot be demon¬ 
strated by ratiocination. It is also a trite obser¬ 
vation that, in the business of life, we constantly 
take the most serious action upon evidence of an 
utterly insufficient character. But it is surely 
plain that faith is not necessarily entitled to 
dispense with ratiocination because ratiocination 
cannot dispense with faith as a starting-point; 
and that because we are often obliged, by the 
pressure of events, to act on very bad evidence, it 
does not follow that it is proper to act on such 
evidence when the pressure is absent. 

The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews tells 


244 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


us tliat “ faith is the assurance of things hoped 
for, the proving of things not seen.” In the 
authorised version, “ substance ” stands for 
“ assurance,” and “ evidence ” for “ proving.” 
The question of the exact meaning of the two 
words, vTTOGTacris and eXey^o?, affords a fine field 
of discussion for the scholar and the metaphysician. 
But I fancy we shall be not far from the mark if 
we take the writer to have had in his mind the 
profound psychological truth, that men constantly 
feel certain about things for which they strongly 
hope, but have no evidence, in the legal or logical 
sense of the word; and he calls this feelmg 
“ faith.” I may have the most absolute faith that 
a friend has not committed the crime of which he 
is accused. In the early days of English history, 
if my friend could have obtained a few more 
compurgators of a like robust faith, he would have 
been acquitted. At the present day, if I tendered 
myself as a witness on that score, the judge would 
tell me to stand down, and the youngest barrister 
would smile at my simplicity. Miserable indeed 
is the man who has not such faith in some of his 
fellow-men—only less miserable than the man 
who allows himself to forget that such faith is not, 
strictly speaking, evidence; and when his faith is 
disappointed, as will happen now and again, turns 
Timon and blames the universe for his own 
blunders. And so, if a man can find a friend, the 
hypostasis of all his hopes, the mirror of his 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


245 


ethical ideal, in the Jesus of any, or all, of the 
Gospels, let him live by faith in that ideal. Who 
shall or can forbid him ? But let him not delude 
himself with the notion that his faith is evidence 
of the objective reality of that in which he trusts. 
Such evidence is to be obtained only by the use 
of the methods of science, as applied to history 
and to literature, and it amounts at present to 
very little. 

It appears that Mr. Gladstone some time ago 
asked Mr. Laing if he could draw up a short 
summary of the negative creed ; a body of 
negative propositions, which have so far been 
adopted on the negative side as to be what the 
Apostles* and other accepted creeds are on the 
positive; and Mr. Laing at once kindly obliged 
Mr. Gladstone with the desired articles—eight of 
them. 

If any one had preferred this request to me, 
I should have replied that, if he referred to ag¬ 
nostics, they have no creed; and, by the nature of 
the case, cannot have any. Agnosticism, in fact, 
is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which 
lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. 
That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as 
Socrates; as old as the writer who said, “ Try all 
things, hold fast by that which is good ; ” it is the 
foundation of the Reformation, which simply illus¬ 
trated the axiom that every man should be able 


246 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


to give a reason for the faith that is in him ; it is 
the great principle of Descartes ; it is the funda¬ 
mental axiom of modern science. Positively the 
principle may be expressed: In matters of the 
intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take 
you, without regard to any other consideration. 
And negatively : In matters of the intellect do 
not pretend that conclusions are certain which are 
not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take 
to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep 
whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to 
look the universe in the face, whatever the future 
may have in store for him. 

The results of the working out of the agnostic 
principle will vary according to individual know¬ 
ledge and capacity, and according to the general 
condition of science. That which is unproven to¬ 
day may be proven by the help of new discoveries 
to morrow. The only negative fixed points will 
be those negations which flow from the demon¬ 
strable limitation of our faculties. And the only 
obligation accepted is to have the mind always 
open to conviction. Agnostics who never fail in 
carrying out their principles are, I am afraid, as 
rare as other people of whom the same consistency 
can be truthfully predicated. But, if you were to 
meet with such a phoenix and to tell him that you 
had discovered that two and two make five, he 
would patiently ask you to state your reasons for 
that conviction, and express his readiness to 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


247 


agree with you if he found them satisfactory. The 
apostolic injunction to “ suffer fools gladly ” should 
be the rule of life of a true agnostic. I am deeply 
conscious how far I myself fall short of this ideal, 
but it is my personal conception of what agnostics 
ought to be. 

However, as I began by stating, I speak only 
for myself; and I do not dream of anathematizing 
and excommunicating Mr. Laing. But, when I 
consider his creed and compare it with the 
Athanasian, I think I have on the whole a 
clearer conception of the meaning of the latter. 
“ Polarity,” in Article VIII., for example, is a word 
about which I heard a good deal in my youth, 
when “ Naturphilosophie” was in fashion, and 
greatly did I suffer from it. For many years past, 
whenever I have met with “ polarity ” anywhere 
but in a discussion of some purely physical topic, 
such as magnetism, I have shut the book. Mr. 
Laing must excuse me if the force of habit was 
too much for me when I read his eighth article. 

And now, what is to be said to Mr. Harrison’s 
remarkable deliverance “ On the future of agnos¬ 
ticism ” ? 1 I would that it were not my business 
to say anything, for I am afraid I can say nothing 
which shall manifest my great personal respect 
for this able writer, and for the zeal and energy 
with which he ever and anon galvanises the 
1 Fortnightly Review, Jan. 18S9. 


218 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


weakly frame of Positivism until it looks, more 
than ever, like John Bunyan’s Pope and Pagan 
rolled into one. There is a story often repeated, 
and I am afraid none the less mythical on that 
account, of a valiant and loud-voiced corporal in 
command of two full privates who, falling in with 
a regiment of the enemy in the dark, orders it to 
surrender under pain of instant annihilation by 
his force; and the enemy surrenders accordingly. 
I am always reminded of this tale when I read 
the positivist commands to the forces of Chris¬ 
tianity and of Science; only the enemy show no 
more signs of intending to obey now than they 
have done any time these forty years. 

The allocution under consideration has a 
certain papal flavour. Mr. Harrison speaks 
with authority and not as one of the com¬ 
mon scribes of the period. He knows not. only 
what agnosticism is and how it has come about, 
but what will become of it. The agnostic is 
to content himself with being the precursor of 
the positivist. In his place, as a sort of navvy 
levelling the ground and cleansing it of such 
poor stuff as Christianity, he is a useful creat¬ 
ure who deserves patting on the back, on con¬ 
dition . that he does not venture beyond his 
last. But let not these scientific Sanballats 
presume that they are good enougii to take part 
in the building of the Temple—they are mere 
Samaritans, doomed to die out in proportion as 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


249 


the Religion of Humanity is accepted by man¬ 
kind. Well, if that is their fate, they have time 
to be cheerful. But let us hear Mr. Harrison’s 
pronouncement of their doom. 

“Agnosticism is a stage in the evolution of 
religion, an entirely negative stage, the point 
reached by physicists, a purely mental conclusion, 
with no relation to things social at all ” (p. 154). 
I am quite dazed by this declaration. Are there, 
then, any “ conclusions ” that are not “ purely 
mental ” ? Is there “ no relation to things social ” 
in “ mental conclusions ” which affect men’s 
whole conception of life ? Was that prince of 
agnostics, David Hume, particularly imbued with 
physical science ? Supposing physical science 
to be non-existent, would not the agnostic 
principle, applied by the philologist and the 
historian, lead to exactly the same results ? Is 
the modern more or less complete suspension of 
judgment as to the facts of the history of regal 
Rome, or the real origin of the Homeric poems, 
anything but agnosticism in history and in 
literature ? And if so, how can agnosticism be 
the “ mere negation of the physicist ” ? 

“Agnosticism is a stage in the evolution of 
religion.” No two people agree as to what is 
meant by the term “ religion ”; but if it means, 
as I think it ought to mean, simply the reverence 
and love for the ethical ideal, and the desire to 
realise that ideal in life, which every man ought 


250 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


to feel—then I say agnosticism has no more to do 
with it than it has to do with music or painting. 
If, on the other hand, Mr. Harrison, like most 
people, means by “ religion ” theology, then, in my 
judgment, agnosticism can be said to be a stage in 
its evolution, only as death may be said to be 
the final stage in the evolution of life. 

When agnostic logic is simply one of the canons of thought, 
agnosticism, as a distinctive faith, will have spontaneously 
disappeared (p. 155). 

I can but marvel that such sentences as this, 
and those already quoted, should have proceeded 
from Mr. Harrison’s pen. Does he really mean to 
suggest that agnostics have a logic peculiar to 
themselves ? Will he kindly help me out of my 
bewilderment when I try to think of “logic” 
being anything else than the canon (which, I 
believe, means rule) of thought ? As to agnos¬ 
ticism being a distinctive faith, I have already 
shown that it cannot possibly be anything of the 
kind, unless perfect faith in logic is distinctive of 
agnostics; which, after all, it may be. 

Agnosticism as a religious philosophy per se rests on an almost 
total ignoring of history and social evolution (p. 152). 

But neither per se nor per aliud has agnosticism 
(if I know anything about it) the least pretension 
to be a religious philosophy; so far from resting 
on ignorance of history, and that social evolution 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


251 


of which history is the account, it is and has 
been the inevitable result of the strict adherence 
to scientific methods by historical investigators. 
Our forefathers were quite confident about the 
existence of Romulus and Remus, of King Arthur, 
and of Hengist and Horsa. Most of us have 
become agnostics in regard to the reality of these 
worthies. It is a matter of notoriety of which 
Mr. Harrison, who accuses us all so freely of 
ignoring history, should not be ignorant, that the 
critical process which has shattered the founda¬ 
tions of orthodox Christian doctrine owes its 
origin, not to the devotees of physical science, but, 
before all, to Richard Simon, the learned French 
Oratorian, just two hundred years ago. I cannot 
find evidence that either Simon, or any one of the 
great scholars and critics of the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries who have continued Simon’s 
work, had any particular acquaintance with 
physical science. I have already pointed out 
that Hume was independent of it. And certainly 
one of the most potent influences in the same 
direction, upon history in the present century, that 
of Grote, did not come from the physical side. 
Physical science, in fact, has had nothing directly 
to do with the criticism of the Gospels; it is 
wholly incompetent to furnish demonstrative 
evidence that any statement made in these his¬ 
tories is untrue. Indeed, modem physiology can 
find parallels in nature for events of apparently 


252 AGNOSTICISM vn 

the most eminently supernatural kind recount¬ 
ed in some of those histories. 

It is a comfort to hear, upon Mr. Harrison's 
authority, that the laws of physical nature show 
no signs of becoming “ less definite, less consistent, 
or less popular as time goes on ” (p. 154). How a 
law of nature is to become indefinite, or “ incon¬ 
sistent,” passes my poor powers of imagination. 
But with universal suffrage and the coach-dog 
theory of premiership in full view; the theory, I 
mean, that the whole duty of a political chief is 
to look sharp for the way the social coach is 
driving, and then run in front and bark loud—as 
if being the leading noise-maker and guiding 
were the same things—it is truly satisfactory to 
me to know that the laws of nature are increasing 
in popularity. Looking a,t recent developments 
of the policy which is said to express the great 
heart of the people, I have had my doubts of the 
fact; and my love for my fellow-countrymen has 
led me to reflect, with dread, on what will happen 
to them, if any of the laws of nature ever become 
so unpopular in their eyes, as to be voted down by 
the transcendent authority of universal suffrage. 
If the legion of demons, before they set out on 
their journey in the swine, had had time to hold 
a meeting and to resolve unanimously “ That the 
law of gravitation is oppressive and ought to be 
repealed,” I am afraid it would have made no 
sort of difference to the result, when their two 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


253 


thousand unwilling porters were once launched 
down the steep slopes of the fatal shore of 
Gennesaret. 

The question of the place of religion as an element of human 
nature, as a force of human society, its origin, analysis, and 
functions, has never been considered at all from an agnostic 
point of view (p. 152). 

I doubt not that Mr. Harrison knows vastly 
more about history than I do; in fact, he tells the 
public that some of my friends and I have had 
no opportunity of occupying ourselves with that 
subject. I do not like to contradict any state¬ 
ment which Mr. Harrison makes on his own 
authority; only, if I may be true to my agnostic 
principles, I humbly ask how he has obtained 
assurance on this head. I do not profess to know 
anything about the range of Mr. Harrison’s 
studies; but as he has thought it fitting to start 
the subject, I may venture to point out that, on 
evidence adduced, it might be equally permis¬ 
sible to draw the conclusion that Mr. Harrison’s 
other labours have not allowed him to acquire 
that acquaintance with the methods and results 
of physical science, or with the history of philo¬ 
sophy, or of philological and historical criticism, 
which is essential to any one who desires to 
obtain a right understanding of agnosticism. 
Incompetence in philosophy, and in all branches 
of science except mathematics, is the well-known 


254 


AGNOSTICISM 


VIl 


mental characteristic of the founder of positivism. 
Faithfulness in disciples is an admirable quality 
in itself; the pity is that it not unfrequently leads 
to the imitation of the weaknesses as well as of 
the strength of the master. It is only such 
over-faithfulness which can account for a “ strong 
mind really saturated with the historical sense ” 
(p. 153) exhibiting the extraordinary forgetfulness 
of the historical fact of the existence of David 
Hume implied by the assertion that 

it would be difficult to name a single known agnostic who has 
given to history anything like the amount of thought and study 
which he brings to a knowledge of the physical world (p. 153). 

Whoso calls to mind what I may venture to 
term the bright side of Christianity—that ideal of 
manhood, with its strength and its patience, its 
justice and its pity for human frailty, its helpful¬ 
ness to the extremity of self-sacrifice, its ethical 
purity and nobility, which apostles have pictured, 
in which armies of martyrs have placed their 
unshakable faith, and whence obscure men and 
women, like Catherine of Sienna and John Knox, 
have derived the courage to rebuke popes and 
kings—is not likely to underrate the importance 
of the Christian faith as a factor in human 
history, or to doubt that if that faith should prove 
to be incompatible with .our knowledge, or neces¬ 
sary want of knowledge, some other hypostasis of 
mens hopes, genuine enough and worthy enough 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


255 


to replace it, will arise. But that the incongruous 
mixture of bad science with eviscerated papistry, 
out of which Comte manufactured the positivist 
religion, will be the heir of the Christian ages, 
I have too much respect for the humanity of the 
future to believe. Charles the Second told his 
brother, “They will not kill me, James, to make 
you king.” And if critical science is remorselessly 
destroying the historical foundations of the noblest 
ideal of humanity which mankind have yet wor¬ 
shipped, it is little likely to permit the pitiful 
reality to climb into the vacant shrine. 

That a man should determine to devote him¬ 
self to the service of humanity—including 
intellectual and moral self-culture under that 
name; that this should be, in the proper sense of 
the word, his religion—is not only an intelligible, 
but, I think, a laudable resolution. And I am 
reatly disposed to believe that it is the only 
religion which will prove itself to be unassailably 
acceptable so long as the human race endures. 
But when the Comtist asks me to worship 
“ Humanity ”—that is to say, to adore the 
generalised conception of men as they ever have 
been and probably ever will be—I must reply 
that I could just as soon bow down and worship 
the generalised conception of a “ wilderness of 
apes.” Surely we are not going back to the days 
of Paganism, when individual men were deified, 
and the hard good sense of a dying Vespasian 
132 


256 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


could prompt the bitter jest, “Ut puto Dens fio.” 
No divinity doth hedge a modern man, be he 
even a sovereign ruler. Nor is there any one, 
except a municipal magistrate, who is officially 
declared worshipful. But if there is no spark of 
worship-worthy divinity in the individual twigs 
of humanity, whence comes that godlike splen¬ 
dour which the Moses of Positivism fondly 
imagines to pervade the whole bush? 

I know no study which is so unutterably sad¬ 
dening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it 
is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the 
darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the 
marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He 
is a brute, only more intelligent than the other 
brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often 
as not lead him to destruction; a victim to 
endless illusions, which make his mental existence 
a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life 
with barren toil and battle. He attains a certain 
degree of physical comfort, and develops a more or 
less workable theory of life, in such favourable 
situations as the plains of Mesopotamia or of 
Egypt, and then, for thousands and thousands of 
years, struggles, with varying fortunes, attended by 
infinite wickedness, bloodshed, and misery, to 
maintain himself at this point against the greed 
and the ambition of his fellow-men. He makes a 
point of killing and otherwise persecuting all 
those who first try to get him to move on; and 


AGNOSTICISM 


257 


when he has moved on a step, foolishly confers 
post-mortem deification on his victims. He ex¬ 
actly repeats the process with all who want to 
move a step yet farther. And the best men of 
the best epochs are simply those who make the 
fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins. 

That one should rejoice in the good man, 
forgive the bad man, and pity and help all men to 
the best of one’s ability, is surely indisputable. It 
is the glory of Judaism and of Christianity to have 
proclaimed this truth, through all their aberra¬ 
tions. But the worship of a God who needs 
forgiveness and help, and deserves pity every 
hour of his existence, is no better than that of 
any other voluntarily selected fetish. The 
Emperor Julian’s project was hopeful in com¬ 
parison with the prospects of the Comtist 
Anthropolatry. 

When the historian of religion in the twentieth 
century is writing about the nineteenth, I foresee 
he will say something of this kind : 

The most curious and instructive events in the 
religious history of the preceding century are the 
rise and progress of two new sects called Mormons 
and Positivists. To the student who has carefully 
considered these remarkable phenomena nothing 
in the records of religious self-delusion can appear 
improbable. 

The Mormons arose in the midst of the great 


258 AGNOSTICISM VII 

Republic, which, though comparatively insignifi¬ 
cant, at that time, in territory as in the number of 
its citizens, was (as we know from the fragments 
of the speeches of its orators which have come 
down to us) no less remarkable for the native 
intelligence of its population than for the wide 
extent of their information, owing to the activity 
of their publishers in diffusing all that they could 
invent, beg, borrow, or steal. Nor were they less 
noted for their perfect freedom from all restraints 
in thought, or speech, or deed ; except, to be sure, 
the beneficent and wise influence of the majority, 
exerted, in case of need, through an institution 
known as “ tarring and feathering,” the exact 
nature of which is now disputed. 

There is a complete consensus of testimony that 
the founder of Mormonism, one Joseph Smith, was 
a low-minded, ignorant scamp, and that he stole 
the “ Scriptures ” which he propounded; not being 
clever enough to forge even such contemptible stuff 
as they contain. Nevertheless he must have been 
a man of some force of character, for a considerable 
number of disciples soon gathered about him. In 
spite of repeated outbursts of popular hatred and 
violence—during one of which persecutions Smith 
was brutally murdered—the Mormon body steadily 
increased, and became a flourishing community. 
But the Mormon practices being objectionable to 
the majority, they were, more than once, without 
any pretence of law, but by force of riot, arson, and 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


259 


murder, driven away from the land they had 
occupied. Harried by these persecutions, the 
Mormon body eventually committed itself to the 
tender mercies of a desert as barren as that of 
Sinai; and after terrible sufferings and privations, 
reached the Oasis of Utah. Here it grew and 
flourished, sending out missionaries to, and receiv¬ 
ing converts from, all parts of Europe, sometimes 
to the number of 10,000 in a year; until, in 1880, 
the rich and flourishing community numbered 
110,000 souls in Utah alone, while there were 
probably 30,000 or 40,000 scattered abroad else¬ 
where. In the whole history of religions there is 
no more remarkable example of the power of faith; 
and, in this case, the founder of that faith was 
indubitably a most despicable creature. It is 
interesting to observe that the course taken by the 
great Republic and its citizens runs exactly parallel 
with that taken by the Roman Empire and its 
citizens towards the early Christians, except that 
the Romans had a certain legal excuse for their 
acts of violence, inasmuch as the Christian 
“sodalitia” were not licensed, and consequently 
were, ipso facto, illegal assemblages. Until, in the 
latter part of the nineteenth century, the United 
States legislature decreed the illegality of poly¬ 
gamy, the Mormons were wholly within the law. 

Nothing can present a greater contrast to all 
this than the history of the Positivists. This sect 
arose much about the same time as that of the 


260 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


Mormons, in the upper and most instructed 
stratum of the quick-witted, sceptical population 
of Paris. The founder, Auguste Comte, was a 
teacher of mathematics, but of no eminence in 
that department of knowledge, and with nothing 
but an amateurs acquaintance with physical, 
chemical, and biological science. His works are 
repulsive, on account of the dull diffuseness of 
their style, and a certain air, as of a superior 
person, which characterises them; but nevertheless 
they contain good things here and there. It 
would take too much space to reproduce in detail 
a system which proposes to regulate all human 
life by the promulgation of a Gentile Leviticus. 
Suffice it to say, that M. Comte may be described 
as a syncretic, who, like the Gnostics of early 
Church history, attempted to combine the sub¬ 
stance of imperfectly comprehended contemporary 
science with the form of Roman Christianity. It 
may be that this is the reason why his disciples 
were so very angry with some obscure people 
called Agnostics, whose views, if we may judge by 
the account left in the works of a great Positivist 
controversial writer, were very absurd. 

To put the matter briefly, M. Comte, finding 
Christianity and Science at daggers drawn, seems 
to have said to Science, “You find Christianity 
rotten at the core, do you? Well, I will scoop 
out the inside of it.” And to Romanism : “You 
find Science mere dry light—cold and bare 


VII 


AGNOSTICISM 


201 


Well, I will put your shell over it, and so, as 
schoolboys make a spectre out of a turnip and a 
tallow candle, behold the new religion of Humanity 
complete! ” 

Unfortunately neither the Romanists, nor the 
people who were something more than amateurs 
in science, could he got to worship M. Comte’s 
new idol properly. In the native country of 
Positivism, one distinguished man of letters and 
one of science, for a time, helped to make up a 
roomful of the faithful, hut their love soon grew 
cold. In England, on the other hand, there ap¬ 
pears to be little doubt that, in the ninth decade 
of the century, the multitude of disciples reached 
the grand total of several score. They had the 
advantage of the advocacy of one or two most 
eloquent and learned apostles, and, at any rate, 
the sympathy of several persons of light and 
leading; and, if they were not seen, they were 
heard, all over the world. On the other hand, as 
a sect, they laboured under the prodigious 
disadvantage of being refined, estimable people, 
living in the midst of the worn-out civilisation of 
the old world; where any one who had tried to 
persecute them, as the Mormons were persecuted, 
would have been instantly hanged. But the 
majority never dreamed of persecuting them; on 
the contrary, they were rather given to scold and 
otherwise try the patience of the majority. 

The history of these sects in the closing years 


262 


AGNOSTICISM 


VII 


of the century is highly instructive. Mormon- 
ism .... 

But I find I have suddenly slipped off Mr. 
Harrison’s tripod, which I had borrowed for the 
occasion. The fact is, I am not equal to the 
prophetical business, and ought not to have 
undertaken it. 

[It did not occur to me, while writing the 
latter part of this essay, that it could be needful 
to disclaim the intention of putting the religious 
system of Comte on a level with Mormonism. 
And I was unaware of the fact that Mr. Harrison 
rejects the greater part of the Positivist Religion, 
as taught by Comte. I have, therefore, erased 
one or two passages, which implied his adherence 
to the “ Religion of Humanity ” as developed by 
Comte, 1893.] 


VIII 

AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 

[1889.] 

Those who passed from Dr. Wace’s article in the 
last number of the “Nineteenth Century” to the 
anticipatory confutation of it which followed in 
“The New Reformation,” must have enjoyed the 
pleasure of a dramatic surprise—just as when the 
fifth act of a new play proves unexpectedly bright 
and interesting. Mrs. Ward will, I hope, pardon 
the comparison, if I say that her effective clearing 
away of antiquated incumbrances from the lists of 
the controversy, reminds me of nothing so much 
as of the action of some neat-handed, but strong- 
wristed, Phyllis, who, gracefully wielding her 
long-handled “ Turk’s head,” sweeps away the 
accumulated results of the toil of generations of 
spiders. I am the more indebted to this luminous 
sketch of the results of critical investigation, as it 
is carried out among those theologians who are 
men of science and not mere counsel for creeds, 


264 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


Till 


since it has relieved me from the necessity of 
dealing with the greater part of Dr. Wace’s 
polemic, and enables me to devote more space to 
the really important issues which have been 
raised. 1 

Perhaps, however, it may be well for me to 
observe that approbation of the manner in which 
a great biblical scholar, for instance, Keuss, does 
his work does not commit me to the adoption of 
all, or indeed any of his views; and, further, that 
the disagreements of a series of investigators do 
not in any way interfere with the fact that each 
of them has made important contributions to the 
body of truth ultimately established. If I cite 
Buffon, Linnaeus, Lamarck, and Cuvier, as having 
each and all taken a leading share in building up 
modem biology, the statement that every one of 
these great naturalists disagreed with, and even 
more or less contradicted, all the rest is quite 
true ; but the supposition that the latter assertion 
is in any way inconsistent with the former, would 
betray a strange ignorance of the manner in which 
all true science advances. 

Dr. Wace takes a great deal of trouble to make 
it appear that I have desired to evade the real 
questions raised by his attack upon me at the 

1 I may perhaps return to the question of the authorship of 
the Gospels. For the present I must content myself with 
warning my readers against any reliance upon Dr. Wace’s state¬ 
ments as to the results arrived at by modern criticism. They 
are as gravely as surprisingly erroneous. 


Till 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


265 


Church Congress. I assure the reverend Principal 
that in this, as in some other respects, he has 
entertained a very erroneous conception of my 
intentions. Things would assume more accurate 
proportions in Dr. Wace’s mind, if he would 
kindly remember that it is just thirty years since 
ecclesiastical thunderbolts began to fly about my 
ears. I have had the “ Lion and the Bear ” to 
deal with, and it is long since I got quite used to 
the threatenings of episcopal Goliaths, whose 
croziers were like unto a weaver’s beam. So that 
I almost think I might not have noticed Dr. 
Wace’s attack, personal as it was ; and although, 
as he is good enough to tell us, separate copies 
are to be had for the modest equivalent of twopence, 
as a matter of fact, it did not come under my 
notice for a long time after it was made. May I 
further venture to point out that (reckoning post¬ 
age) the expenditure of twopence-halfpenny, or, at 
the most, threepence, would have enabled Dr. 
Wace so far to comply with ordinary conventions, 
as to direct my attention to the fact that he had 
attacked me before a meeting at which I was not 
present ? I really am not responsible for the five 
months’ neglect of which Dr. Wace complains. 
Singularly enough, the Englishry who swarmed 
about the Engadine, during the three months 
that I was being brought back to life by the 
glorious air and perfect comfort of the Maloja, did 
not, in my hearing, say anything about the 


2G6 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


VIII 


important events which had taken place at the 
Church Congress ; and I think I can venture to 
affirm that there was not a single copy of Dr. 
Wace’s pamphlet in any of the hotel libraries 
which I rummaged, in search of something more 
edifying than dull English or questionable French 
novels. 

And now, having, as I hope, set myself right 
with the public as regards the sins of commission 
and omission with which I have been charged, I 
feel free to deal with matters to which time and 
type may be more profitably devoted. 

I believe that there is not a solitary argument 
I have used, or that I am about to use, which is 
original, or has anything to do with the fact that 
I have been chiefly occupied with natural science. 
They are all, facts and reasoning alike, either 
identical with, or consequential upon, propositions 
which are to be found in the works of scholars 
and theologians of the highest repute in the only 
two countries, Holland and Germany , 1 in which, 
at the present time, professors of theology are to 
be found, whose tenure of their posts does not 
depend upon the results to which their inquiries 
lead them . 2 It is true that, to the best of my 

1 The United States ought, perhaps, to be added, but I am 
not sure. 

2 Imagine that all our chairs of Astronomy had been founded 
in the fourteenth century, and that their incumbents were bound, 
to sign Ptolemaic articles. In that case, with every respect for 
the efforts of persons thus hampered to attain and expound the 


'vm 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


267 


ability, I have satisfied myself of the soundness of 
the foundations on which my arguments are built, 
and I desire to be held fully responsible for 
everything I say. But, nevertheless, my position 
is really no more than that of an expositor; and 
my justification for undertaking it is simply that 
conviction of the supremacy of private judgment 
(indeed, of the impossibility of escaping it) which 
is the foundation of the Protestant Reformation, 
and which was the doctrine accepted by the vast 
majority of the Anglicans of my youth, before 
that backsliding towards the “ beggarly rudi¬ 
ments ” of an effete and idolatrous sacerdotalism 
which has, even now, provided us with the saddest 
spectacle which has been offered to the eyes of 
Englishmen in this generation. A high court of 
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, with a host of great 
lawyers in battle array, is and, for Heaven knows 
how long, will be, occupied with these very 
questions of “ washing of cups and pots and brazen 
vessels,” which the Master, whose professed 


truth, I think men of common sense would go elsewhere to learn* 
astronomy. Zeller’s Vorirdge und Abhandlungen were published 
and came into my hands a quarter of a century ago. The 
writer’s rank, as a theologian to begin with, and subsequently 
as a historian of Greek philosophy, is of the highest. Among 
these essays are two— Das Ur christen thum and Die Tubinger 
historische Schitle —which are likely to be of more use to those 
who wish to know the real state of the case than all that the 
official “apologists,” with their one eye on truth and the other 
on the tenets of their sect, have written. For the opinion of a 
scientific theologian about theologians of this stamp see pp. 225 
and 227 of the Vortrdge. 


2G8 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


VIII 


representatives are rending the Church over these 
squabbles, had in his mind when, as we are told, 
he uttered the scathing rebuke :— 

Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, 
This people honoureth me with their lips, 

But their heart is far from me. 

But in vain do they worship me, 

Teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men. 

(Mark vii. 6-7.) 

Men who can be absorbed in bickerings over 
miserable disputes of this kind can have but little 
sympathy with the old evangelical doctrine of the 
“ open Bible,” or anything but a grave misgiving 
of the results of diligent reading of the Bible, 
without the help of ecclesiastical spectacles, by 
the mass of the people. Greatly to the surprise 
of many of my friends, I have always advocated 
the reading of the Bible, and the diffusion of the 
study of that most remarkable collection of books 
among the people. Its teachings are so infinitely 
superior to those of the sects, who are just as busy 
now as the Pharisees were eighteen hundred years 
*ago, in smothering them under “ the precepts of 
men ”; it is so certain, to my mind, that the Bible 
contains within itself the refutation of nine-tenths 
of the mixture of sophistical metaphysics and 
old-world superstition which has been piled round 
it by the so-called Christians of later times; it is 
so clear that the only immediate and ready 
antidote to the poison which has been mixed with 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


2C9 


Christianity, to the intoxication and delusion of 
mankind, lies in copious draughts from the 
undefiled spring, that I exercise the right and 
duty of free judgment on the part of every man, 
mainly for the purpose of inducing other laymen 
to follow my example. If the New Testament 
is translated into Zulu by Protestant missionaries, 
it must be assumed that a Zulu convert is compe¬ 
tent to draw from its contents all the truths which 
it is necessary for him to believe. I trust that I 
may, without immodesty, claim to be put on the 
same footing as a Zulu. 

The most constant reproach which is launched 
against persons of my way of thinking is that it is 
all very well for us to talk about the deductions 
of scientific thought, but what are the poor and 
the uneducated to do ? Has it ever occurred to 
those who talk in this fashion, that their creeds 
and the articles of their several confessions, their 
determination of the exact nature and extent of 
the teachings of Jesus, their expositions of the 
real meaning of that which is written in the 
Epistles (to leave aside all questions concerning 
the Old Testament), are nothing more than 
deductions which, at any rate, profess to be the 
result of strictly scientific thinking, and which are 
not worth attending to unless they really possess 
that character ? If it is not historically true that 
such and such things happened in Palestine 
eighteen centuries ago, what becomes of Chris- 


270 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


VIII 


tianity ? And what is historical truth but that of 
which the evidence bears strict scientific investi¬ 
gation ? I do not call to mind any problem of 
natural science which has come under my notice 
which is more difficult, or more curiously 
interesting as a mere problem, than that of the 
origin of the Synoptic Gospels and that of the 
historical value of the narratives which they 
contain. The Christianity of the Churches stands 
or falls by the results of the purely scientific 
investigation of these questions. They were first 
taken up, in a purely scientific spirit, about a 
century ago; they have been studied over and 
over again by men of vast knowledge and critical 
acumen ; but he would be a rash man who should 
assert that any solution of these problems, as yet 
formulated, is exhaustive. The most that can be 
said is that certain prevalent solutions are 
certainly false, while others are more or less 
probably true. 

If I am doing my best to rouse my countrymen 
out of their dogmatic slumbers, it is not that they 
may be amused by seeing who gets the best of it 
in a contest between a “ scientist ” and a theolo¬ 
gian. The serious question is whether theological 
men of science, or theological special pleaders, are 
to have the confidence of the general public; 
it is the question whether a country in which it is 
possible for a body of excellent clerical and lay 
gentlemen to discuss, in public meeting assembled, 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


271 


now much it is desirable to let the congregations 
of the faithful know of the results of biblical 
criticism, is likely to wake up with anything short 
of the grasp of a rough lay hand upon its 
shoulder; it is the question whether the New 
Testament books, being, as I believe they were, 
written and compiled by people who, according to 
their lights, were perfectly sincere, will not, when 
properly studied as ordinary historical documents, 
afford us the means of self-criticism. And it must 
be remembered that the New Testament books 
are not responsible for the doctrine invented by 
the Churches that they are anything but ordinary 
historical documents. The author of the third 
gospel tells us, as straightforwardly as a man can, 
that he has no claim to any other character than 
that of an ordinary compiler and editor, who had 
before him the works of many and variously 
qualified predecessors. 

In my former papers, according to Dr. Wace, I 
have evaded giving an answer to his main propo¬ 
sition, which he states as follows— 

Apart from all disputed points of criticism, no one practically 
doubts that our Lord lived, and that He died on the cross, in 
the most intense sense of filial relation to His Fatherin Heaven, 
and that He bore testimony to that Father’s providence, love, 
and grace towards mankind. The Lord’s Prayer affords a 
sufficient evidence on these points. If the Sermon on the Mount 
alone be added, the whole unseen world, of which the Agnostic 
refuses to know anything, stands unveiled before us. . . . If 
133 


272 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


VTIT 


Jesus Christ preached that Sermon, made those promises, and 
taught that prayer, then any one who says that we know nothing 
of God, or of a future life, or of an unseen world, says that he 
does not believe Jesus Christ (pp. 354-355). 

Again— 

The main question at issue, in a word, is one which Pro¬ 
fessor Huxley has chosen to leave entirely on one side—whether, 
namely, allowing for the utmost uncertainty on other points of 
the criticism to which he appeals, there is any reasonable doubt 
that the Lord’s Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount afford a 
true account of our Lord’s essential belief and cardinal teaching 
(p. 355). 

I certainly was not aware that I had evaded the 
questions here stated ; indeed I should say that I 
have indicated my reply to them pretty clearly; 
but, as Dr. Wace wants a plainer answer, he shall 
certainly be gratified. If, as Dr. Wace declares it 
is, his “ whole case is involved in ” the argument 
as stated in the latter of these two extracts, so 
much the worse for his whole case. For I am of 
opinion that there is the gravest reason for 
doubting whether the “ Sermon on the Mount ” 
was ever preached, and whether the so-called 
“ Lord’s Prayer ** was ever prayed, by Jesus of 
Nazareth. My reasons for this opinion are, among 
others, these:—There is now no doubt that the 
three Synoptic Gospels, so far from being the work 
of three independent writers, are closely inter¬ 
dependent , 1 and that in one of two ways. Either 

1 I suppose this is what Dr. Wace is thinking about when he 
says that I allege that there “is no visible escape” from the 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


273 


all three contain, as their foundation, versions, to 
a large extent verbally identical, of one and the 
same tradition; or two of them are thus closely 
dependent on the third ; and the opinion of the 
majority of the best critics has of late years more 
and more converged towards the conviction that 
our canonical second gospel (the so-called “Mark’s” 
Gospel) is that which most closely represents the 
primitive groundwork of the three . 1 That I take 
to be one of the most valuable results of New 
Testament criticism, of immeasurably greater im¬ 
portance than the discussion about dates and 
authorship. 

But if, as I believe to be the case, beyond any 
rational doubt or dispute, the second gospel is the 
nearest extant representative of the oldest tradi¬ 
tion, whether written or oral, how comes it that it 

supposition of an Ur-Marcus (p. 367). That a “ theologian of 
repute ” should confound an indisputable fact with one of the 
modes of explaining that fact is not so singular as those who are 
unaccustomed to the ways of theologians might imagine. 

1 Any examiner whose duty it has been to examine into a case 
of “ copying ” will be particularly well prepared to appreciate 
the force of the case stated in that most excellent little book, 
The Common Tradition of the Synoptic Gospr.ls, by Dr. Abbott 
and Mr. Rushbrooke (Macmillan, 1884). To those who have not 
passed through such painful experiences I may recommend the 
brief discussion of the genuineness of the “ Cnsket Letters ” in my 
friend Mr. Skelton’s interesting book, Maitland of Lething'on. 
The second edition of Holtzmann’s Lehrbuch, published in 1886, 
gives a remarkably fair and full account of the present results of 
criticism. At p. 366 he writes that the present burning question 
is whether the “relatively primitive narrative and the root of 
the other synoptic texts is contained in Matthew or in Mark. 
It is only on this point that properly-informed ( sachkund.ige) 
critics differ,” and he decides in favour of Mark. 


274? 


agnosticism: a rejoinder 


VIII 


contains neither the “ Sermon on the Mount ” nor 
the “ Lord’s Prayer,” those typical embodiments, 
according to Dr. Wace, of the “ essential belief and 
cardinal teaching” of Jesus? Not only does 
“ Mark’s ” gospel fail to contain the “ Sermon on 
the Mount,” or anything but a very few of the 
sayings contained in that collection; but, at the 
point of the history of Jesus where the “ Sermon ” 
occurs in “ Matthew,” there is in “ Mark ” an 
apparently unbroken narrative from the calling of 
James and John to the healing of Simon’s wife’s 
mother. Thus the oldest tradition not only ignores 
the “ Sermon on the Mount,” but, by implication, 
raises a probability against its being delivered 
when and where the later “ Matthew ” inserts it in 
his compilation. 

And still more weighty is the fact that the third 
gospel, the author of which tells us that he wrote 
after “ many ” others had “ taken in hand ” the 
same enterprise; who should therefore have known 
the first gospel (if it existed), and was bound to 
pay to it the deference due to the work of an 
apostolic eye-witness (if he had any reason for 
thinking it was so)—this writer, who exhibits far 
more literary competence than the other two, 
ignores any “ Sermon on the Mount,” such as that 
reported by “ Matthew,” just as much as the oldest 
authority does. Yet “ Luke ” has a great many 
passages identical, or parallel, with those in 
“ Matthew’s ” “ Sermon on the Mount,” which are. 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


275 


for the most part, scattered about in a totally 
different connection. 

Interposed, however, between the nomination of 
the Apostles and a visit to Capernaum ; occupying, 
therefore, a place which answers to that of the 
“ Sermon on the Mount,” in the first gospel, there 
is, in the third gospel a discourse which is as closely 
similar to the “ Sermon in the Mount,” in some 
particulars, as it is widely unlike it in others. 

This discourse is said to have been delivered in 
a “ plain ” or “ level place ” (Luke vi. 17), and by 
way of distinction we may call it the “ Sermon on 
the Plain.” 

I see no reason to doubt that the two Evan¬ 
gelists are dealing, to a considerable extent, with 
the same traditional material; and a comparison 
of the two “ Sermons ” suggests very strongly that 
“ Luke’s ” version is the earlier. The correspond- 
dences between the two forbid the notion that 
they are independent. They both begin with a 
series of blessings, some of which are almost 
verbally identical. In the middle of each (Luke 
vi. 27-38, Matt. v. 43-48) there is a striking expo¬ 
sition of the ethical spirit of the command given 
in Leviticus xix. 18. And each ends with a pas¬ 
sage containing the declaration that a tree is to be 
known by its fruit, and the parable of the house 
built on the sand. But while there are only 29 
verses in the “ Sermon on the Plain ” there are 
107 in the “ Sermon on the Mount” ; the excess 
in length of the latter being chiefly due to the 


276 AGNOSTICISM : A KEJOINDEK Till 

long interpolations, one of 80 verses before and 
one of 34 verses after, the middlemost parallelism 
with Luke. Under these circumstances it is quite 
impossible to admit that there is more probability 
that “ Matthew’s ” version of the Sermon is histori¬ 
cally accurate, than there is that Luke’s version is 
so; and they cannot both be accurate. 

“ Luke ” either knew the collection of loosely- 
connected and aphoristic utterances which appear 
under the name of the “ Sermon on the Mount ” 
in “ Matthew ” ; or he did not. If he did not, he 
must have been ignorant of the existence of such 
a document as our canonical “ Matthew/’ a fact 
which does not make for the genuineness, or the 
authority, of that book. If he did, he has shown 
that he does not care for its authority on a matter 
of fact of no small importance; and that does not 
permit us to conceive that he believed the first gospel 
to be the work of an authority to whom he ought 
to defer, let alone that of an apostolic eye¬ 
witness. 

The tradition of the Church about the second 
gospel, which I believe to be quite worthless, but 
which is all the evidence there is for “ Mark’s ” 
authorship, would have us believe that “Mark” 
was little more than the mouthpiece of the apostle 
Peter. Consequently, we are to suppose that 
Peter either did not know, or did not care very 
much for, that account of the “essential belief 
and cardinal teaching ” of Jesus which is con¬ 
tained in the Sermon on the Mount; and, certainly, 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


VIII 


277 


he could not have shared Dr. Wace’s view of its 
importance . 1 

I thought that all fairly attentive and intelligent 
students of the gospels, to say nothing of theo¬ 
logians of reputation, knew these things. But 
how can any one who does know them have the 
conscience to ask whether there is “ any reason¬ 
able doubt ” that the Sermon on the Mount 
was preached by Jesus of Nazareth ? If conjecture 
is permissible, where nothing else is possible, 
the most probable conjecture seems to be that 
“ Matthew,” having a cento of sayings attributed— 
rightly or wrongly it is impossible to say—to Jesus 
among his materials, thought they were, or might 
be, records of a continuous discourse, and put them 
in at the place he thought likeliest. Ancient his¬ 
torians of the highest character saw no harm in 
composing long speeches which never were spoken, 
and putting them into the mouths of statesmen 
and warriors; and I presume that whoever is re¬ 
presented by “ Matthew ” would have been griev¬ 
ously astonished to find that any one objected to 
his following the example of the best models 
accessible to him. 

1 Holtzmann ( Die synoptischen Evangclicn, 1863, p. 75), 
following Ewald, argues that the ‘Source A ” ( = the threefold 
tradition, more or less) contained something that answered to 
the “Sermon on the Plain ” immediately after the words of our 
present Mark, “And he cometh into a house” (iii. 19). But 
what conceivable motive could “Mark” have for omitting it ? 
Holtzmann has no doubt, however, that the “Sermon on the 
Mount” is a compilation, or, as he calls it in his recently- 
published Lchrbuch (p. 372), “an artificial mosaic work.” 


278 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


VITI 


So with the “Lord’s Prayer.” Absent in onr 
representative of the oldest tradition, it appears 
in both “ Matthew ” and “ Luke.” There is reason 
to believe that every pious Jew, at the commence¬ 
ment of our era, prayed three times a day, 
according to a formula which is embodied in the 
present “ Schmone-Esre ” 1 of the Jewish prayer- 
book. Jesus, who was assuredly, in all respects, a 
pious Jew, whatever else he may have been, 
doubtless did the same. Whether he modified 
the current formula, or whether the so-called 
“ Lord’s Prayer ” is the prayer substituted for the 
“ Schmone-Esre ” in the congregations of the Gen¬ 
tiles, is a question which can hardly be answered. 

In a subsequent passage of Dr. Wace’s article 
(p. 356) he adds to the list of the verities which 
he imagines to be unassailable, “ The Story of the 
Passion.” I am not quite sure what he means by 
this. I am not aware that any one (with the 
exception of certain ancient heretics) has pro¬ 
pounded doubts as to the reality of the crucifixion; 
and certainly I have no inclination to argue about 
the precise accuracy of every detail of that 
pathetic story of suffering and wrong. But, if 
Dr. Wace means, as I suppose he does, that that 
which, according to the orthodox view, happened 
after the crucifixion, and which is, in a dogmatic 
sense, the most important part of the story, is 

1 See Schiirer, Geschichte des jiidischen VolJces, Zweiter Theil 
p. 384. 


VIII AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 279 

founded on solid historical proofs, I must beg leave 
to express a diametrically opposite conviction. 

What do we find when the accounts of the 
events in question, contained in the three Synoptic 
gospels, are compared together? In the oldest, 
there is a simple, straightforward statement which, 
for anything that I have to urge to the contrary, 
may be exactly true. In the other two, there is, 
round this possible and probable nucleus, a mass 
of accretions of the most questionable character. 

The cruelty of death by crucifixion depended 
very much upon its lingering character. If there 
were a support for the weight of the body, as not 
unfrequently was the practice, the pain during 
the first hours of the infliction was not, necessarily, 
extreme ; nor need any serious physical symptoms, 
at once, arise from the wounds made by the nails 
in the hands and feet, supposing they were nailed, 
which was not invariably the case. When 
exhaustion set in, and hunger, thirst, and nervous 
irritation had done their work, the agony of the 
sufferer must have been terrible; and the more 
terrible that, in the absence of any effectual 
disturbance of the machinery of physical life, it 
might be prolonged for many hours, or even days. 
Temperate, strong men, such as were the ordinary 
Galilean peasants, might live for several days on 
th§ cross. It is necessary to bear these facts in 
mind when we read the account contained in the 
fifteenth chapter of the second gospel. 


280 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


VIII 


Jesus was crucified at the third hour (xv. 25), 
and the narrative seems to imply that he died 
immediately after the ninth hour (v. 34). In this 
case, he would have been crucified only six hours; 
and the time spent on the cross cannot have been 
much longer, because Joseph of Arimathsea must 
have gone to Pilate, made his preparations, and 
deposited the body in the rock-cut tomb before 
sunset, which, at that time of the year, was about 
the twelfth hour. That any one should die after 
only six hours’ crucifixion could not have been at 
all in accordance with Pilate’s large experience of 
the ‘effects of that method of punishment. It, 
therefore, quite, agrees with what might be ex¬ 
pected, that Pilate “ marvelled if he were already 
dead ” and required to be satisfied on this point 
by the testimony of the Roman officer who was in 
command of the execution party. Those who 
have paid attention to the extraordinarily difficult 
question, What are the indisputable signs of 
death ?—will be able to estimate the value of the 
opinion of a rough soldier on such a subject; 
even if his report to the Procurator were in no wise 
affected by the fact that the friend of Jesus, who 
anxiously awaited his answer, was a man of 
influence and of wealth. 

The inanimate body, wrapped in linen, was 
deposited in a spacious, 1 cool rock chamber, the 

1 Spacious, because a young man could sit in it “ on the right 
side ” (xv. 5), and therefore with plenty of room to spare. 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


281 


entrance of which was closed, not by a well-fitting 
door, but by a stone rolled against the opening, 
which would of course allow free passage of air. 
A little more than thirty-six hours afterwards 
(Frida} T 6 P.M., to Sunday 6 A.M., or a little after) 
three women visit the tomb and find it empty. 
And they are told by a young man “ arrayed in a 
white robe” that Jesus is gone to his native 
country of Galilee, and that the disciples and Peter 
will find him there. 

Thus it stands, plainly recorded, in the oldest 
tradition that, for any evidence to the contrary, 
the sepulchre may have been emptied at any time 
during the Friday or Saturday nights. If it is 
said that no Jew would have violated the Sabbath 
by taking the former course, it is to be recollected 
that Joseph of Arimathsea might well be familiar 
with that wise and liberal interpretation of the 
fourth commandment, which permitted works of 
mercy to men-—nay, even the drawing of an ox or 
an ass out of a pit—on the Sabbath. At any 
rate, the Saturday night was free to the most 
scrupulous of observers of the Law. 

These are the facts of the case as stated by the 
oldest extant narrative of them. I do not see why 
any one should have a word to say against the 
inherent probability of that narrative ; and, for my 
part, I am quite ready to accept it as an historical 
fact, that so much and no more is positively known 
of the end of Jesus of Nazareth. On what 


282 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


VIII 


grounds can a reasonable man be asked to believe 
any more ? So far as the narrative in the first 
gospel, on the one hand, and those in the third 
gospel and the Acts, on the other, go beyond what 
is stated in the second gospel, they are hopelessly 
discrepant with one another. And this is the more 
significant because the pregnant phrase “some 
doubted,” in the first gospel, is ignored in the 
third. 

But it is said that we have the witness Paul 
speaking to us directly in the Epistles. There is 
little doubt that we have, and a very singular 
witness he is. According to his own showing, 
Paul, in the vigour of his manhood, with every 
means of becoming acquainted, at first hand, with 
the evidence of eye-witnesses, not merely refused 
to credit them, but “ persecuted the church of God 
and made havoc of it.” The reasoning of Stephen 
fell dead upon the acute intellect of this zealot for 
the traditions of his fathers: his eyes were blind 
to the ecstatic illumination of the martyr’s 
countenance “ as it had been the face of an 
angel-” and when, at the words “Behold, I see 
the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing 
on the right hand of God,” the murderous mob 
rushed upon and stoned the rapt disciple of Jesus, 
Paul ostentatiously made himself their official 
accomplice. 

Yet this strange man, because he has a vision 
one day, at once, and with equally headlong zeal, 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


283 


flies to the opposite pole of opinion. And he is 
most careful to tell us that he abstained from any 
re-examination of the facts. 

Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood ; neither 
went I np to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles before me ; 
but I went away into Arabia. (Galatians i. 16, 17.) 

I do not presume to quarrel with Paul’s 
procedure. If it satisfied him, that was his affair; 
and, if it satisfies anyone else, I am not called upon 
to dispute the right of that person to be satisfied. 
But I certainly have the right to say that it would 
not satisfy me, in like case; that I should be very 
much ashamed to pretend that it could, or ought 
to, satisfy me ; and that I can entertain but a very 
low estimate of the value of the evidence of people 
who are to be satisfied in this fashion, when 
questions of objective fact, in which their faith is 
interested, are concerned. So that when I am 
called upon to believe a great deal more than the 
oldest gospel tells me about the final events of the 
history of Jesus on the authority of Paul (1 
Corinthians xv. 5-8) I must pause. Did he think 
it, at any subsequent time, worth while “ to confer 
with flesh and blood/’ or, in modern phrase, to 
re-examine the facts for himself ? or was he ready 
to accept anything that fitted in with his 
preconceived ideas ? Does he mean, when he 
speaks of all the appearances of Jesus after the 
crucifixion as if they were of the same kind, that 


284 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


VIII 


they were all visions, like the manifestation to 
himself ? And, finally, how is this account to be 
reconciled with those in the first and third 
gospels—which, as we have seen, disagree with 
one another ? 

Until these questions are satisfactorily answered, 
I am afraid that, so far as I am concerned, Paul’s 
testimony cannot be seriously regarded, except as 
it may afford evidence of the state of traditional 
opinion at the time at which he wrote, say 
between 55 and 60 A.D. ; that is, more than 
twenty years after the event; a period much more 
than sufficient for the development of any amount 
of mythology about matters of which nothing was 
really known. A few years later, among the con¬ 
temporaries and neighbours of the Jews, and, if 
the most probable interpretation of the Apoca¬ 
lypse can be trusted, among the followers of Jesus 
also, it was fully believed, in spite of all the 
evidence to the contrary, that the Emperor Nero 
was not really dead, but that he was hidden away 
somewhere in the East, and would speedily come 
again at the head of a great army, to be revenged 
upon his enemies. 1 

Thus, I conceive that I have shown cause foi 
the opinion that Dr. Wace’s challenge touching 
the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, and 

1 King Herod had not the least difficulty in supposing the 
resurrection of John the Baptist—“ John, whom I beheaded, 
he is risen ” (Mark vi. 16). 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


285 


the Passion was more valorous than discreet. 
After all this discussion, I am still at the agnostic 
point. Tell me, first, what Jesus can be proved 
to have been, said, and done, and I will say 
whether I believe him, or in him, 1 or not. As Dr. 
Wace admits that I have dissipated his lingering 
shade of unbelief about the bedevilment of the 
Gadarene pigs, he might have done something to 
help mine. Instead of that, he manifests a total 
want of conception of the nature of the obstacles 
which impede the conversion of his “infidels.” 

The truth I believe to be, that the difficulties 
in the way of arriving at a sure conclusion as to 
these matters, from the Sermon on the Mount, 
the Lord’s Prayer, or any other data offered by 
the Synoptic gospels (and & fortiori from the 
fourth gospel), are insuperable. Every one of 
these records is coloured by the prepossessions of 
those among whom the primitive traditions arose, 
and of those by whom they were collected and 
edited : and the difficulty of making allowance for 
these prepossessions is enhanced by our ignorance 
of the exact dates at which the documents were 
first put together; of the extent to which they 


1 I am very sorry for the interpolated “ in,” because citation 
ought to be accurate in small things as in great. But what 
difference it makes whether one “believes Jesus” or “believes 
in Jesus” much thought has not enabled me to discover. If 
you “ believe him ” you must believe him to be what he pro- 
fessed to be—that is, “believe in him ; ” and if you “ believe 
in him” you must necessarily “ believe him.” 


286 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


VIII 


have been subsequently worked over and inter¬ 
polated ; and of the historical sense, or want of 
sense, and the dogmatic tendencies of their 
compilers and editors. Let us see if there is any 
other road which will take us into something 
better than negation. 

There is a widespread notion that the “ primi¬ 
tive Church,” while under the guidance of the 
Apostles and their immediate successors, was a 
sort of dogmatic dovecot, pervaded by the most 
loving unity and doctrinal harmony. Protestants, 
especially, are fond of attributing to themselves 
the merit of being nearer.“the Church of the 
Apostles” than their neighbours; and they are 
the less to be excused for their strange delusion 
because they are great readers of the documents 
which prove the exact contrary. The fact is that, 
in the course of the first three centuries of its 
existence, the Church rapidly underwent a process 
of evolution of the most remarkable character, 
the final stage of which is far more different from 
the first than Anglicanism is from Quakerism. 
The key to the comprehension of the problem 
of the origin of that which is now called 
“Christianity,” and its relation to Jesus of 
Nazareth, lies here. Nor can we arrive at any 
sound conclusion as to what it is probable that 
Jesus actually said and did, without being clear on 
this head. By far the most important and 
subsequently influential steps in the evolution of 


VIII AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 287 

Christianity took place in the course of the 
century, more or less, which followed upon the 
crucifixion. It is almost the darkest period of 
Church history, but, most fortunately, the begin¬ 
ning and the end of the period are brightly 
illuminated by the contemporary evidence of two 
writers of whose historical existence there is no 
doubt, 1 and against the genuineness of whose 
most important works there is no widely-admitted 
objection. These are Justin, the philosopher and 
martyr, and Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. I 
shall call upon these witnesses only to testify to 
the condition of opinion among those who called 
themselves disciples of Jesus in their time. 

Justin, in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, 
which was written somewhere about the middle of 
the second century, enumerates certain categories 
of persons who, in his opinion, will, or will not, be 
saved. 2 These are :— 

1. Orthodox Jews who refuse to believe that 
Jesus is the Christ. Act Saved. 

2. Jews who observe the Law; believe Jesus to 
be the Christ; but who insist on the observance 
of the Law by Gentile converts. Not Saved. 

3. Jews who observe the Law; believe Jesus to 

1 True for Justin : but there is a school of theological critics, 
who more or less question the historical reality of Paul, and the 
genuineness of even the four cardinal epistles. 

2 See Dial, cum Tryphone, § 47 and § 35. It is to be under¬ 
stood that Justin does not arrange these categories in order, as I 
have done. 


134 


288 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


VIII 


be the Christ, and hold that Gentile converts 
need not observe the Law. Saved (in Justin’s 
opinion; but some of his fellow-Christians think 
the contrary). 

4. Gentile converts to the belief in Jesus as the 
Christ, who observe the Law. Saved (possibly). 

5. Gentile believers in Jesus as the Christ, who 
do not observe the Law themselves (except so far 
as the refusal of idol sacrifices), but do not 
consider those who do observe it heretics. Saved 
(this is Justin’s own view). 

6. Gentile believers who do not observe the 
Law, except in refusing idol sacrifices, and hold 
those who do observe it to be heretics. Saved. 

7. Gentiles who believe Jesus to be the Christ 
and call themselves Christians, but who eat meats 
sacrificed to idols. Not Saved. 

8. Gentiles who disbelieve in Jesus as the 
Christ. Not Saved. 

Justin does not consider Christians who believe 
in the natural birth of Jesus, of whom he implies 
that there is a respectable minority, to be heretics, 
though he himself strongly holds the preternatural 
birth of Jesus and his pre-existence as the 
“Logos” or “ Word.” He conceives the Logos to 
be a second God, inferior to the first, unknowable 
God, with respect to whom Justin, like Philo, is 
a complete agnostic. The Holy Spirit is not re¬ 
garded by Justin as a separate personality, and 
is often mixed up with the “ Logos.” The 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


2S9 


doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul is, 
for Justin, a heresy; and he is as firm & believer 
in the resurrection of the body, as in the 
speedy Second Coming and the establishment of 
the millennium. 

This pillar of the Church in the middle of 
the second century—a much-travelled native of 
Samaria—was certainly well acquainted with 
Rome, probably with Alexandria; and it is likely 
that he knew the state of opinion throughout the 
length and breadth of the Christian world as well 
as any man of his time. If the various categories 
above enumerated are arranged in a series 
thus :— 

Justin’s Christianity 
s' X 

Orthodox Judceo-Christianity Idohthytic 

Judaism ^~- s Christianity Paganism 

I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. 

it is obvious that they form a gradational series 
from orthodox Judaism, on the extreme left, to 
Paganism, whether philosophic or popular, on the 
extreme right; and it will further be observed 
that, while Justin’s conception of Christianity is 
very broad, he rigorously excludes tvro classes of 
persons who, in his time, called themselves 
Christians; namely, those who insist on circum¬ 
cision and other observances of the Law on the 
part of Gentile converts; that is to say, the strict 
Judaeo-Christians (II.); and, on the other hand, 
those who assert the lawfulness of eating meat 






290 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


VIII 


offered to idols—whether they are Gnostic or not 
(YU.) These last I have called “ idolothytic ” 
Christians, because I cannot devise a better 
name, not because it is strictly defensible etymo¬ 
logically. 

At the present moment, I do not suppose there 
is an English missionary in any heathen land who 
would trouble himself whether the materials of his 
dinner had been previously offered to idols or not. 
On the other hand, I suppose there is no Protestant 
sect within the pale of orthodoxy, to say nothing of 
the Roman and Greek Churches, which would 
hesitate to declare the practice of circumcision and 
the observance of the Jewish Sabbath and dietary 
rules, shockingly heretical. 

Modern Christianity has, in fact, not only shifted 
far to the right of Justin’s position, but it is of 
much narrower compass. 

Justin 

Judceo-Christianity Modern Christianity Paganism 

Judaism / - v ^^ 

I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. 

For, though it includes VII., and even, in saint 
and relic worship, cuts a “ monstrous cantle ” out 
of paganism, it excludes, not only all Judseo- 
Christians, but all who doubt that such are 
heretics. Ever since the thirteenth century, the 
Inquisition would have cheerfully burned, and in 
Spain did abundantly burn, all persons who came 
under the categories II., III. IV., V. And the 







VIII 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


291 


wolf would play the same havoc now, if it could 
only get its blood-stained jaws free from the 
muzzle imposed by the secular arm. 

Further, there is not a Protestant body except 
the Unitarian, which would not declare Justin 
himself a heretic, on account of his doctrine of the 
inferior godship of the Logos; while I am very 
much afraid that, in strict logic, Dr. Wace would 
be under the necessity, so painful to him, of call¬ 
ing him an “ infidel,” on the same and on other 
grounds. 

Now let us turn to our other authority. If 
there is any result of critical investigations of the 
sources of Christianity which is certain, 1 it is that 
Paul of Tarsus wrote the Epistle to the Galatians 
somewhere between the years 55 and 60 A.D., that 
is to say, roughly, twenty, or five-and-twenty years 
after the crucifixion. If this is so, the Epistle to 
the Galatians is one of the oldest, if not the very 
oldest, of extant documentary evidences of the 
state of the primitive Church. And, be it observed, 
if it is Paul’s writing, it unquestionably furnishes 
us with the evidence of a participator in the 
transactions narrated. With the exception of two 
or three of the other Pauline Epistles, there is not 
one solitary book in the New Testament of the 
authorship and authority of which we have such 
good evidence. 

1 I guard myself against being supposed to affirm that even 
the four cardinal epistles of Paul may not have been seriously 
tampered with. See note 1, p. 287 above. 


292 AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


vm 


And what is the state of things we find dis¬ 
closed ? A bitter quarrel, in his account of which 
Paul by no means minces matters, or hesitates to 
hurl defiant sarcasms against those who were 
“ reputed to be pillars ” : James “ the brother of 
the Lord,” Peter, the rock on whom Jesus is said 
to have built his Church, and John, “the beloved 
disciple.” And no deference toward “ the rock ” 
withholds Paul from charging Peter to his face with 
“ dissimulation.” 

The subject of the hot dispute was simply this. 
Were Gentile converts bound to obey the Law or 
not ? Paul answered in the negative ; and, acting 
upon his opinion, he had created at Antioch (and 
elsewhere) a specifically “Christian ” community, 
the sole qualifications for admission into which were 
the confession of the belief that Jesus was the 
Messiah, and baptism upon that confession. In 
the epistle in question, Paul puts this—his 
“ gospel,” as he calls it—in its most extreme form. 
Not only does he deny the necessity of conformity 
with the Law, but he declares such conformity to 
have a negative value. “Behold, I, Paul, say 
unto you, that if ye receive circumcision, Christ 
will profit you nothing ” (Galatians v. 2). He 
calls the legal observances “ beggarly rudiments,” 
and anathematises every one who preaches to the* 
Galatians any other gospel than his own. That is 
to say, by direct consequence, he anathematises the 
Nazarenes of Jerusalem, whose zeal for the Law is 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


293 


testified by James in a passage of the Acts cited 
further on. In the first Epistle to the Corinthians, 
dealing with the question of eating meat offered to 
idols, it is clear that Paul himself thinks it a 
matter of indifference; but he advises that it 
should not be done, for the sake of the weaker 
brethren. On the other hand, the Nazarenes of 
Jerusalem most strenuously opposed Paul’s 
“ gospel,” insisting on every convert becoming a 
regular Jewish proselyte, and consequently on his 
observance of the whole Law; and this party was led 
by James and Peter and John (Galatians ii. 9) 
Paul does not suggest that the question of principle 
was settled by the discussion referred to in Gala¬ 
tians. All he says is, that it ended in the prac¬ 
tical agreement that he and Barnabas should do 
as they had been doing, in respect to the Gentiles; 
while James and Peter and John should deal in 
their own fashion with Jewish converts. After¬ 
wards, he complains bitterly of Peter, because, 
when on a visit to Antioch, he, at first, inclined to 
Paul’s view and ate with the Gentile converts; 
but when “ certain came from James,” “ drew back, 
and separated himself, fearing them that were of the 
circumcision. And the rest of the Jews dissembled 
likewise with him ; insomuch that even Barnabas 
was carried away with their dissimulation” 
(Galatians ii. 12-13). 

There is but one conclusion to be drawn from* 
Paul’s account of this famous dispute, the settle- 


294 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


VIII 


ment of which determined the fortunes of the 
nascent religion. It is that the disciples at Jeru¬ 
salem, headed by “James, the Lord’s brother,” and 
by the leading apostles, Peter and John, were strict 
Jews, who had objected to admit any converts 
into their body, unless these, either by birth, or by 
becoming proselytes, were also strict Jews. In 
fact, the sole difference between James and Peter 
and John, with the body of the disciples whom 
they led and the Jews by whom they were 
surrounded, and with whom they, for many years, 
shared the religious observances of the Temple, 
was that they believed that the Messiah, whom 
the leaders of the nation yet looked for, had 
already come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. 

The Acts of the Apostles is hardly a very trust¬ 
worthy history; it is certainly of later date than 
the Pauline Epistles, supposing them to be 
genuine. And the writer’s version of the confer¬ 
ence of which Paul gives so graphic a description, 
if that is correct, is unmistakably coloured with 
all the art of a reconciler, anxious to cover up a 
scandal. But it is none the less instructive on 
this account. The judgment of the “ council ” 
delivered by James is that the Gentile converts 
shall merely “ abstain from things sacrificed to 
idols, and from blood and from things strangled, 
# and from fornication.” But notwithstanding the 
accommodation in which the writer of the Acts 
would have us believe, the Jerusalem Church held 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


295 


to its endeavour to retain the observance of the 
Law. Long after the conference, some time after 
the writing of the Epistles to the Galatians and 
Corinthians, and immediately after the despatch of 
that to the Romans, Paul makes his last visit to 
Jerusalem, and presents himself to James and all 
the elders. And this is what the Acts tells us of 
the interview:— 

And they said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many 
thousands [or myriads] there are among the Jews of them which 
have believed ; and they are all zealous for the law; and they 
have been informed concerning thee, that thou teachest all the 
Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling 
them not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the 
customs. (Acts xxi. 20, 21.) 

They therefore request that he should perform a 
certain public religious act in the Temple, in 
order that 

all shall know that there is no truth in the things whereof they 
have been informed concerning thee; but that thou thyself 
walkest orderly, keeping the law (ibid. 24). 1 

How far Paul could do what he is here re¬ 
quested to do, and which the writer of the Acts 
goes on to say he did, with a clear conscience, if he 
wrote the Epistles to the Galatians and Corinth¬ 
ians, I may leave any candid reader of these 
epistles to decide. The point to which I wish to 

1 [Paul, in fact, is required to commit in Jerusalem, an act 
of the same character as that which he brands as “dissimula¬ 
tion ” oa the pait of Peter in Antioch.] 


206 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


VIII 


direct attention is the declaration that the Jeru¬ 
salem Church, led by the brother of Jesus and by 
his personal disciples and friends, twenty years 
and more after his death, consisted of strict and 
zealous Jews. 

Tertullus, the orator, caring very little about 
the internal dissensions of the followers of Jesus, 
speaks of Paul as a “ ringleader of the sect of the 
Nazarenes” (Acts xxiv. 5), which must have 
affected James much in the same way as it would 
have moved the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 
George Fox’s day, to hear the latter called a 
“ringleader of the sect of Anglicans.” In fact, 
“Nazarene” was, as is well known, the distinctive 
appellation applied to Jesus; his immediate 
followers were known as Nazarenes; while the 
congregation of the disciples, and, later, of converts 
at Jerusalem—the Jerusalem Church—was em¬ 
phatically the “ sect of the Nazarenes,” no more, 
in itself, to be regarded as anything outside 
Judaism than the sect of the Sadducees, or that 
of the Essenes. 1 In fact, the tenets of both the 
Sadducees and the Essenes diverged much more 
widely from the Pharisaic standard of orthodoxy 
than Nazarenism did. 

Let us consider the position of affairs now (a.d. 
50-CO) in relation to that which obtained in 

1 All this was quite .clearly pointed out by Ritschl nearly 
forty years ago. See Die Dntstehung der alL-katlwlischc. A 'irchi 
(1850), p. 108. 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


297 


Justin’s time, a century later. It is plain that 
the Nazarenes—presided over by James, “the 
brother of the Lord,” and comprising within their 
body all the twelve apostles—belonged to Justin’s 
second category of “ Jews who observe the Law, 
believe Jesus to be the Christ, but who insist on 
the observance of the Law by Gentile converts,” 
up till the time at which the controversy reported 
by Paul arose. They then, according to Paul, 
simply allowed him to form his congregations of 
non-legal Gentile converts at Antioch and else¬ 
where ; and it would seem that it was to these 
converts, who would come under Justin’s fifth 
category, that the title of “ Christian ” was first 
applied. If any of these Christians had acted 
upon the more than half-permission given by 
Paul, and had eaten meats offered to idols, 
they ♦would have belonged to Justin’s seventh 
category. 

Hence, it appears that, if Justin’s opinion, 
which was probably that of the Church generally 
in the middle of the second century, was correct, 
James and Peter and John and their followers 
could not be saved ; neither could Paul, if he 
carried into practice his views as to the indiffer¬ 
ence of eating meats offered to idols. Or, to put 
the matter another way, the centre of gravity of 
orthodoxy, which is at the extreme right of the 
series in the nineteenth century, was at the ex¬ 
treme left, just before the middle of the first 


298 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


VIII 


century, when the “sect of the Nazarenes” consti¬ 
tuted the whole church founded by Jesus and the 
apostles; while, in the time of Justin, it lay mid¬ 
way between the two. It is therefore a profound 
mistake to imagine that the Judseo-Christians 
(Nazarenes and Ebionites) of later times were 
heretical outgrowths from a primitive universalist 
“ Christianity.” On the contrary, the universalist 
“ Christianity ” is an outgrowth from the 
primitive, purely Jewish, Nazarenism; which, 
gradually eliminating all the ceremonial and 
dietary parts of the Jewish law, has thrust aside 
its parent, and all the intermediate stages of its 
development, into the position of damnable 
heresies. 

Such being the case, we are in a position to 
form a safe judgment of the limits within which 
the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth must have been 
confined. Ecclesiastical authority would have us 
believe that the words which are given at the end 
of the first Gospel, “ Go ye, therefore, and make 
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father and of the Son and of the 
Holy Ghost,” are part of the last commands of 
Jesus, issued at the moment of his parting with 
the eleven. If so, Peter and John must have 
heard these words; they are too plain to be mis¬ 
understood ; and the occasion is too solemn for 
them ever to be forgotten. Yet the “ Acts ” tells 
us that Peter ueeded a vision to enable him so 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


299 


much as to baptize Cornelius; and Paul, in the 
Galatians, knows nothing of words which would 
have completely borne him out as against those 
who, though they heard, must be supposed to 
have either forgotten, or ignored them. On the 
other hand, Peter and John, who are supposed to 
have heard the “ Sermon on the Mount/’ know 
nothing of the saying that Jesus had not come to 
destroy the Law, but that every jot and tittle of 
the Law must be fulfilled, which surely would 
have been pretty good evidence for their view of 
the question. 

We are sometimes told that the personal 
friends and daily companions of Jesus remained 
zealous Jews and opposed Paul’s innovations, 
because they were hard of heart and dull of 
comprehension. This hypothesis is hardly in 
accordance with the concomitant faith of those 
who adopt it, in the miraculous insight and super¬ 
human sagacity of their Master ; nor do I see any 
way of getting it to harmonise with the orthodox 
postulate; namely, that Matthew was the author 
of the first gospel and John of the fourth. If that 
is so, then, most assuredly, Matthew was no 
dullard; and as for the fourth gospel—a theo- 
sophic- romance of the first order—it could have 
been written by none but a man of remarkable 
literary capacity, who had drunk deep of 
Alexandrian philosophy. Moreover, the doctrine 
of the writer of the fourth gospel is more remote 


300 


agnosticism: a rejoinder 


VIII 


from that of the “ sect of the Nazarenes ” than is 
that of Paul himself. I am quite aware that 
orthodox critics have been capable of maintaining 
that John, the Nazarene, who was probably well 
past fifty years of age, when he is supposed to have 
written the most thoroughly Judaising book in 
the New Testament—the Apocalypse—in the 
roughest of Greek, underwent an astounding 
metamorphosis of both doctrine and style by the 
time he reached the ripe age of ninety or so, and 
provided the world with a history in which the 
acutest critic cannot [always] make out where the 
speeches of Jesus end and the text of the narrative 
begins; while that narrative is utterly irreconcil¬ 
able, in regard to matters of fact, with that of his 
fellow-apostle, Matthew. 

The end of the whole matter is this:—The 
“sect of the Nazarenes,” the brother and the 
immediate followers of Jesus, commissioned by 
him as apostles, and those who were taught by 
them up to the year 50 A.D., were not “Christians” 
in the sense in which that term has been under¬ 
stood ever since its asserted origin at Antioch, but 
Jews—strict orthodox Jews—whose belief in the 
Messiahship of Jesus never led to their exclusion 
from the Temple services, nor would have shut 
them out from the wide embrace of Judaism. 1 

1 “If every one was baptized as soon as he acknowledged J esus 
to be the Messiah, the first Christians can have been aware of no 
other essential differences from the Jews.”—Zeller, Vortragt 
(1865), p. 26. 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM: A KEJOINGEll 


301 


The open proclamation of their special view about 
the Messiah was doubtless offensive to the 
Pharisees, just' as rampant Low Churchism is 
offensive to bigoted High Churchism in our own 
country; or as any kind of dissent is offensive to 
fervid religionists of all creeds. To the Sadducees, 
no doubt, the political danger of any Messianic 
movement was serious ; and they would have been 
glad to put down Nazarenism, lest it should end 
in useless rebellion against their Roman masters, 
like that other Galilean movement headed by 
Judas, a generation earlier. Galilee was always a 
hotbed of seditious enthusiasm against the rule of 
Rome; and high priest and procurator alike had 
need to keep a sharp eye upon natives of that 
district. On the whole, however, the Nazarenes 
were but little troubled for the first twenty years 
of their existence; and the undying hatred of the 
Jews against those later converts, whom they 
regarded as apostates and fautors of a sham 
Judaism, was awakened by Paul. From their 
point of view, he was a mere renegade Jew, 
opposed alike to orthodox Judaism and to ortho¬ 
dox Nazarenism; and whose teachings threatened 
Judaism with destruction. And, from their point 
of view, they were quite right. In the course of 
a century, Pauline influences had a large share in 
driving primitive Nazarenism from being the very 
heart of the new faith into the position of scouted 
error; and the spirit of Paul’s doctrine continued 


302 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


VIII 


its work of driving Christianity farther and farther 
away from Judaism, until “ meats offered to idols ” 
might be eaten without scruple, while the 
Nazarene methods of observing even the Sabbath, 
or the Passover, were branded with the mark of 
Judaising heresy. 

But if the primitive Nazarenes of whom the 
Acts speaks were orthodox Jews, what sort of 
probability can there be that Jesus was anything 
else ? How can he have founded the universal 
religion which was not heard of till twenty years 
after his death ? 1 That Jesus possessed, in a rare 
degree, the gift of attaching men to his person and 
to his fortunes; that lie was the author of many 
a striking saying, and the advocate of equity, of 
love, and of humility; that he may have dis¬ 
regarded the subtleties of the bigots for legal 
observance, and appealed rather to those noble 
conceptions of religion which constituted the pith 
and kernel of the teaching of the great prophets 
of his nation seven hundred years earlier; and 
that, in the last scenes of his career, he may have 
embodied the ideal sufferer of Isaiah, may be, as 
I think it is, extremely probable. But all this 
involves not a step beyond the borders of orthodox 

1 Dr. Hamack, in the lately-published second edition of his 
Dogmcngeschichte, says (p. 39), “Jesus Christ brought forward 
no new doctrine ; ” and again (p. 65), “ It is not difficult to set 
against every portion of the utterances of Jesus an observation 
which deprives him of originality.” See also Zusata 4, on the 
same page. 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


303 


Judaism. Again, who is to say whether Jesus 
proclaimed himself the veritable Messiah, ex¬ 
pected by his nation since the appearance of the 
pseudo-prophetic work of Daniel, a century and a 
half before his time ; or whether the enthusiasm 
of his followers gradually forced him to assume 
that position ? 

But one thing is quite certain : if that belief in 
the speedy second coming of the Messiah which 
was shared by all parties in the primitive Church, 
whether Nazarene or Pauline; which Jesus is 
made to prophesy, over and over again, in the 
Synoptic gospels; and which dominated the life 
of Christians during the first century after the 
crucifixion ;—if he believed and taught that, then 
assuredly he was under an illusion, and he is re¬ 
sponsible for that which the mere effluxion of time 
has demonstrated to be a prodigious error. 

When I ventured to doubt “whether any 
Protestant theologian who has a reputation to 
lose will say that he believes the Gadarene story,” 
it appears that I reckoned without Dr. Wace, 
who, referring to this passage in my paper, 
says:— 

He will judge whether I fall under his description; but I 
repeat that I believe it, and that he has removed the only objec¬ 
tion to my believing it (p. 363). 

Far be it from me to set myself up as a judge 
135 


304 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


VIII 


of any such delicate question as that put before 
me ; but I think I may venture to express the 
conviction that, in the matter of courage, Dr. 
Wace has raised for himself a monument cere 
perennius. For really, in my poor judgment, a 
certain splendid intrepidity, such as one admires 
in the leader of a forlorn hope, is manifested 
by Dr. Wace when he solemnly affirms that he 
believes the Gadarene story on the evidence 
offered. I feel less complimented perhaps than I 
ought to do, when I am told that I have been an 
accomplice in extinguishing in Dr. Wace’s mind 
the last glimmer of doubt which common sense 
may have suggested. In fact, I must disclaim all 
responsibility for the use to which the information 
I supplied has been put. I formally decline to 
admit that the expression of my ignorance whether 
devils, in the existence of which I do not believe, 
if they did exist, might or might not be made to 
go out of men into pigs, can, as a matter of logic, 
have been of any use whatever to a person who 
already believed in devils and in the historical 
accuracy of the gospels. 

Of the Gadarene story, Dr. Wace, with all 
solemnity and twice over, affirms that he “ believes 
it.” I am sorry to trouble him further, but what 
does he mean by “ it ” ? Because there are two 
stories, one in “ Mark ” and “ Luke,” and the other 
in “ Matthew.” In the former, which I quoted 
in my previous paper, there is one possessed 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


305 


man; in the latter there are two. The story is 
told fully, with the vigorous homely diction and 
the picturesque details of a piece of folklore, in 
the second gospel. The immediately antecedent 
event is the storm on the Lake of Gennesaret. 
The immediately consequent events are the 
message from the ruler of the synagogue and the 
healing of the woman with an issue of blood. 
In the third gospel, the order of events is exactly 
the same, and there is an extremely close general 
and verbal correspondence between the narratives 
of the miracle. Both agree in stating that there 
was only one possessed man, and that he was 
the residence of many devils, whose name was 
“ Legion/’ 

In the first gospel, the event which immediately 
precedes the Gadarene affair is, as before, the 
storm ; the message from the ruler and the healing 
of the issue are separated from it by the accounts 
of the healing of a paralytic, of the calling of 
Matthew, and of a discussion with some Pharisees. 
Again, while the second gospel speaks of the 
country of the * Gerasenes ” as the locality of the 
event, the third gospel has “ Gerasenes,” 
“ Gergesenes,” and “ Gadarenes ” in different 
ancient MSS. ; while the first has “ Gadarenes.” 

The really important points to be noticed, 
however, in the narrative of the first gospel, are 
these—that there are two possessed men instead 
of one; and that while the story is abbreviated by 


306 


AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER 


VII] 


omissions, what there is of it is often verbally 
identical with the corresponding passages in the 
other two gospels. The most unabashed of 
reconcilers cannot well say that one man is the 
same as two, or two as one; and, though the 
suggestion really has been made, that two different 
miracles, agreeing in all essential particulars, 
except the number of the possessed, were effected 
immediately after the storm on the lake, I should 
be sorry to accuse any one of seriously adopting it. 
Nor will it be pretended that the allegory refuge 
is accessible in this particular case. 

So, when Dr. Wace says that he believes in the 
synoptic evangelists’ account of the miraculous 
bedevilment of swine, I may fairly ask which of 
them does he believe ? Does he hold by the one 
evangelist’s story, or by that of the two evan¬ 
gelists ? And having made his election, what 
reasons has he to give for his choice ? If it is 
suggested that the witness of two is to be taken 
against that of one, not only is the testimony 
dealt with in that common-sense fashion against 
which the theologians of his school protest so 
warmly; not only is all question of inspiration at 
an end, but the further inquiry arises, After all, is 
it the testimony of two against one ? Are the 
authors of the versions in the second and third 
gospels really independent witnesses ? In order to 
answer this question, it is only needful to place 
the English versions of the two side by side, and 


VIII 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


307 


compare them carefully. It will then be seen that 
the coincidences between them, not merely in 
substance, but in arrangement, and in the use of 
identical words in the same order, are such, that 
only two alternatives are conceivable: either one 
evangelist freely copied from the other, or both 
based themselves upon a common source, which 
may either have been a written document, or a 
definite oral tradition learned by heart. Assuredly, 
these two testimonies are not those of independent 
witnesses. Further, when the narrative in the 
first gospel is compared with that in the other two, 
the same fact comes out. 

Supposing, then, that Dr. Wace is right in his 
assumption that Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote 
the works which we find attributed to them by 
tradition, what is the value of their agreement, 
even that something more or less like this par¬ 
ticular miracle occurred, since it is demonstrable, 
either that all depend on some antecedent state¬ 
ment, of the authorship of which nothing is known, 
or that two are dependent upon the third ? 

Dr. Wace says he believes the Gadarene story; 
whichever version of it he accepts, therefore, he 
believes that Jesus said what he is stated in all the 
versions to have said, and thereby virtually 
declared that the theory of the nature of the 
spiritual world involved in the story is true. 
Now I hold that this theory is false, that it is a 
monstrous and mischievous fiction; and I unhesi- 


308 


AGNOSTICISM : A REJOINDER 


VIII 


tatingly express my disbelief in any assertion that 
it is true, by whomsoever made. So that, if Dr. 
Wace is right in his belief, he is also quite right 
in classing me among the people he calls “ infidels 
and although I cannot fulfil the eccentric expec¬ 
tation that I shall glory in a title which, from my 
point of view, it would be simply silly to adopt, 
I certainly shall rejoice not to be reckoned among 
“ Christians ” so long as the profession of belief in 
such stories as the Gadarene pig affair, on the 
strength of a tradition of unknown origin, of which 
two discrepant reports, also of unknown origin, 
alone remain, forms any part of the Christian 
faith. And, although I have, more than once, 
repudiated the gift of prophecy, yet I think I 
may venture to express the anticipation, that if 
“ Christians ” generally are going to follow the line 
taken by Dr. Wace, it will not be long before all 
men of common sense qualify for a place amono- 
the “ infidels.” 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


[1889] 

Nemo ergo ex me scire quserat, quod me nescirescio, nisi forte 
ut nescire discat.— Augustinus, Be Civ. Dei, xii. 7. 

1 The present discussion has arisen out of the use, 
which has become general in the last few years, of 
the terms “Agnostic” and “Agnosticism.” 

The people who call themselves “Agnostics” 
have been charged with doing so because they 
have not the courage to declare themselves 
“ Infidels.” It has been insinuated that they 
have adopted a new name in order to escape the 
unpleasantness which attaches to their proper 
denomination. To this wholly erroneous imputa¬ 
tion, I have replied by showing that the term 
“ Agnostic ” did, as a matter of fact, arise in a 
manner which negatives it; and my statement 
has not been, and cannot be, refuted. Moreover, 

1 The substance of a paragraph which precedes this has been 
transferred to the Prologue. 


310 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


speaking for myself, and without impugning the 
right of any other person to use the term in 
another sense, I further say that Agnosticism is 
not properly described as a “ negative ” creed, nor 
indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as 
it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a 
principle, which is as much ethical as intellectual. 
This principle may be stated in various ways, but 
they all amount to this : that it is wrong for a 
man to say that he is certain of the objective 
truth of any proposition unless he can produce 
evidence which logically justifies that certainty. 
This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my 
opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism. 
That which Agnostics deny and repudiate, as 
immoral, is the contrary doctrine, that there are 
propositions which men ought to believe, without 
logically satisfactory evidence; and that repro¬ 
bation ought to attach to the profession of 
disbelief in such inadequately supported pro¬ 
positions. The justification of the Agnostic 
principle lies in the success which follows upon 
its application, whether in the field of natural, or 
in that of civil, history ; and in the fact that, so 
far as these topics are concerned, no sane man 
thinks of denying its validity. 

Still speaking for myself, I add, that though 
Agnosticism is not, and cannot be, a creed, except 
in so far as its general principle is concerned; yet 
that the application of that principle results in 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 311 


the denial of, or the suspension of judgment 
concerning, a number of propositions respecting 
which our contemporary ecclesiastical “ gnostics ” 
profess entire certainty. And, in so far as these 
ecclesiastical persons can be justified in their old- 
established custom (which many nowadays think 
more honoured in the breach than the observance) 
of using opprobrious names to those who differ 
from them, I fully admit their right to call me 
and those who think with me “ Infidels ”; all I 
have ventured to urge is that they must not 
expect us to speak of ourselves by that title. 

The extent of the region of the uncertain, the 
number of the problems the investigation of 
which ends in a verdict of not proven, will vary 
according to the knowledge and the intellectual 
habits of the individual Agnostic. I do not very 
much care to speak of anything as “ unknowable.” 1 
What I am sure about is that there are many 
topics about which I know nothing; and which, 
so far as I can see, are out of reach of my faculties. 
But whether these things are knowable by any 
one else is exactly one of those matters which is 
beyond my knowledge, though I may have a 
tolerably strong opinion as to the probabilities of 
the case. Relatively to myself, I am quite sure 
that the region of uncertainty—the nebulous 
country in which words play the part of realities 

1 I confess that, long ago, I once or twice made this mistake ; 
even to the waste of a capital ‘U.’ 1893. 


312 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


—is far more extensive than I could wish. 
Materialism and Idealism ; Theism and Atheism; 
the doctrine of the soul and its mortality or 
immortality—appear in the history of philosophy 
like the shades of Scandinavian heroes, eternally 
slaying one another and eternally coming to life 
again in a metaphysical “ Nifelheim.” It is 
getting on for twenty-five centuries, at least, since 
mankind began seriously to give their minds to 
these topics. Generation after generation, phil¬ 
osophy has been doomed to roll the stone uphill; 
and, just as all the world swore it was at the top, 
down it has rolled to the bottom again. All this 
is written in innumerable books; and he who will 
toil through them will discover that the stone is 
just where it was when the work began. Hume 
saw this; Kant saw it; since their time, more and 
more eyes have been cleansed of the films which 
prevented them from seeing it; until now the 
weight and number of those who refuse to be the 
prey of verbal mystifications has begun to tell in 
practical life. 

It was inevitable that a conflict should arise 
between Agnosticism and Theology; or rather, I 
ought to say, between Agnosticism and Ecclesias- 
ticism. For Theology, the science, is one thing; 
and Ecclesiasticism, the championship of a fore¬ 
gone conclusion 1 as to the truth of a particular 

1 “Let us maintain, before we have proved. This seeming 
paradox is the secret of happiness” (Dr. Newman : Tract 85, p. 85) 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 313 


form of Theology, is another. With scientific 
Theology, Agnosticism has no quarrel. On the 
contrary, the Agnostic, knowing too well the 
influence of prejudice and idiosyncrasy, even on 
those who desire most earnestly to be impartial, 
can wish for nothing more urgently than that the 
scientific theologian should not only be at perfect 
liberty to thresh out the matter in his own 
fashion; but that he should, if he can, find flaws 
in the Agnostic position; and, even if demonstra¬ 
tion is not to be had, that he should put, in their 
full force, the grounds of the conclusions he thinks 
probable. The scientific theologian admits the 
Agnostic principle, however widely his results 
may differ from those reached by the majority of 
Agnostics. 

But, as between Agnosticism and Ecclesiasti- 
cism, or, as our neighbours across the Channel 
call it, Clericalism, there can be neither peace nor 
truce. The Cleric asserts that it is morally wrong 
not to believe certain propositions, whatever the 
results of a strict scientific investigation of the 
evidence of these propositions. He tells us “ that 
religious error is, in itself, of an immoral nature .” 1 
He declares that he has prejudged certain con¬ 
clusions, and looks upon those who show cause 
for arrest of judgment as emissaries of Satan. It 
necessarily follows that, for him, the attainment 
of faith, not the ascertainment of truth, is the 
1 Dr. Newman, Essay on Development , p. 357. 


314 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


highest aim of mental life. And, on careful 
analysis of the nature of this faith, it will too 
often be found to be, not the mystic process of 
unity with the Divine, understood by the religious 
enthusiast; but that which the candid simplicity 
of a Sunday scholar once defined it to be. 
“Faith,” said this unconscious plagiarist of 
Tertullian, “is the power of saying you believe 
things which are incredible.” 

Now I, and many other Agnostics, believe that 
faith, in this sense, is an abomination ; and though 
we do not indulge in the luxury of self-righteous¬ 
ness so far as to call those who are not of our way 
of thinking hard names, we do feel that the 
disagreement between ourselves and those who 
hold this doctrine is even more moral than 
intellectual. It is desirable there should be an 
end of any mistakes on this topic. If our clerical 
opponents were clearly aware of the real state of 
the case, there would be an end of the curious 
delusion, which often appears between the lines 
of their writings, that those whom they are so 
fond of calling “ Infidels ” are people who not 
only ought to be, but in their hearts are, ashamed 
of themselves. It would be discourteous to do 
more than hint the antipodal opposition of this 
pleasant dream of theirs to facts. 

The clerics and their lay allies commonly tell 
us, that if we refuse to admit that there is good 
ground for expressing definite convictions about 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 315 


certain topics, the bonds of human society will 
dissolve and mankind lapse into savagery. There 
are several answers to this assertion. One is that 
the bonds of human society were formed without 
the aid of their theology; and, in the opinion of 
not a few competent judges, have been weakened 
rather than strengthened by a good deal of it. 
Greek science, Greek art, the ethics of old Israel, 
the social organisation of old Rome, contrived to 
come into being, without the help of any one who 
believed in a single distinctive article of the 
simplest of the Christian creeds. The science, 
the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and 
social theories, of the modern world have grown 
out of those of Greece and Rome—not by favour 
of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings 
of early Christianity, to which science, art, and 
any serious occupation with the things of this 
world, were alike despicable. 

Again, all that is best in the ethics of the 
modern world, in so far as it has not grown out 
of Greek thought, or Barbarian manhood, is the 
direct development of the ethics of old Israel. 
There is no code of legislation, ancient or modem, 
at once so just and so merciful, so tender to the 
weak and poor, as the Jewish law; and, if the 
Gospels are to be trusted, Jesus of Nazareth 
himself declared that he taught nothing but that 
which lay implicitly, or explicitly, in the religious 
and ethical system of his people. 


316 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


And the scribe said unto him, Of a truth, Teacher, thou 
hast well said that he is one ; and there is none other but he 
and to love him with all the heart, and with all the under¬ 
standing, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour 
as himself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and 
sacrifices. (Mark xii. 32, 33.) 

Here is the briefest of summaries of the teaching 
of the prophets of Israel of the eighth century; 
does the Teacher, whose doctrine is thus set forth 
in his presence, repudiate the exposition ? Nay ; 
we are told, on the contrary, that Jesus saw that 
he “ answered discreetly,” and replied, “ Thou art 
not far from the kingdom of God.” 

So that I think that even if the creeds, from 
the so-called “ Apostles ’ ” to the so-called 
“ Athanasian,” were swept into oblivion; and even 
if the human race should arrive at the conclusion 
that, whether a bishop washes a cup or leaves it 
unwashed, is not a matter of the least consequence* 
it will get on very well. The causes which have 
led to the development of morality in mankind, 
which have guided or impelled us all the way 
from the savage to the civilised state, will not 
cease to operate because a number of ecclesiastical 
hypotheses turn out to be baseless. And, even if 
the absurd notion that morality is more the child 
of speculation than of practical necessity and 
inherited instinct, had any foundation; if all the 
world is going to thieve, murder, and otherwise 
misconduct itself as soon as it discovers that 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 317 


certain portions of ancient history are mythical; 
what is the relevance of such arguments to any 
one who holds by the Agnostic principle ? 

Surely, the attempt to cast out Beelzebub by the 
aid of Beelzebub is a hopeful procedure as com¬ 
pared to that of preserving morality by the aid of 
immorality. For I suppose it is admitted that an 
Agnostic may be perfectly sincere, may be com¬ 
petent, and may have studied the question at issue 
with as much care as his clerical opponents. But, 
if the Agnostic really believes what he says, the 
“ dreadful consequence ” argufier (consistently, I 
admit, with his own principles) virtually asks him 
to abstain from telling the truth, or to say what 
he believes to be untrue, because of the supposed 
injurious consequences to morality. “ Beloved 
brethren, that we may be spotlessly moral, before 
all things let us lie,” is the sum. total of many an 
exhortation addressed to the “ Infidel.” Now, as 
I have already pointed out, we cannot oblige our 
exhorters. We leave the practical application of 
the convenient doctrines of “ Reserve ” and “ Non¬ 
natural interpretation ” to those who invented 
them. 

I trust that I have now made amends for any 
ambiguity, or want of fulness, in my previous ex¬ 
position of that which I hold to be the essence of 
the Agnostic doctrine. Henceforward, I might 
hope to hear no more of the assertion that 
we are necessarily Materialists, Idealists, Atheists, 


818 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


Theists, or any other ists, if experience had led me 
to think that the proved falsity of a statement 
was any guarantee against its repetition. And 
those who appreciate the nature of our position 
will see, at once, that when Ecclesiasticism 
declares that we ought to believe this, that, and 
the other, and are very wicked if we don’t, it is 
impossible for us to give any answer but this: 
We have not the slightest objection to believe 
anything you like, if you will give us good grounds 
for belief; but, if you cannot, we must respectfully 
refuse, even if that refusal should wreck morality 
and insure our own damnation several times over. 
We are quite content to leave that to the decision 
of the future. The course of the past has im¬ 
pressed us with the firm conviction that no good 
ever comes of falsehood, and we feel warranted in 
refusing even to experiment in that direction. 

In the course of the present discussion it has 
been asserted that the “ Sermon on the Mount ” 
and the “ Lord’s Prayer ” furnish a summary and 
condensed view of the essentials of the teaching of 
Jesus of Nazareth, set forth by himself. Now this 
supposed Summa of Nazarene theology distinctly 
affirms the existence of a spiritual world, of a 
Heaven, and of a Hell of fire; it teaches the 
Fatherhood of God and the malignity of the 
Devil; it declares the superintending providence of 
the former and our need of deliverance from the 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 319 


machinations of the latter; it affirms the fact of 
demoniac possession and the power of casting out 
devils by the faithful. And, from these premises, 
the conclusion is drawn, that those Agnostics who 
deny that there is any evidence of such a character 
as to justify certainty, respecting the existence and 
the nature of the spiritual world, contradict the 
express declarations of Jesus. I have replied to 
this argumentation by showing that there is strong 
reason to doubt the historical accuracy of the 
attribution to Jesus of either the “Sermonon 
the Mount ” or the “ Lord’s Prayer ” ; and, there¬ 
fore, that the conclusion in question is not 
warranted, at any rate, on the grounds set 
forth. 

But, whether the Gospels contain trustworthy 
statements about this and other alleged historical 
facts or not, it is quite certain that from them, 
taken together with the other books of the N ew 
Testament, we may collect a pretty complete 
exposition of that theory of the spiritual world 
which was held by both Nazarenes and Christians; 
and which was undoubtedly supposed by them to 
be fully sanctioned by Jesus, though it is just as 
clear that they did not imagine it contained any 
revelation by him of something heretofore un¬ 
known. If the pneumatological doctrine which 
pervades the whole New Testament is nowhere 
systematically stated, it is everywhere assumed. 
The writers of the Gospels and of the Acts take it 
136 


320 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


for granted, as a matter of common knowledge; 
and it is easy to gather from these sources a 
series of propositions, which only need arrange¬ 
ment to form a complete system. 

In this system, Man is considered to be a 
duality formed of a spiritual element, the soul; 
and a corporeal 1 element, the body. And this 
duality is repeated in the Universe, which consists 
of a corporeal world embraced and interpenetrated 
by a spiritual world. The former consists of the 
earth, as its principal and central constituent, with 
the subsidiary sun, planets, and stars. Above the 
earth is the air, and below is the watery abyss. 
Whether the heaven, which is conceived to be 
above the air, and the hell in, or below, the sub¬ 
terranean deeps, are to be taken as corporeal or 
incorporeal is not clear. However this may be, 
the heaven and the air, the earth and the abyss, 
are peopled by innumerable beings analogous in 
nature to the spiritual element in man, and these 
spirits are of two kinds, good and bad. The chief 
of the good spirits, infinitely superior to all the 
others, and their creator, as well as the creator of 
the corporeal world and of the bad spirits, is God. 

1 It is by no means to be assumed that “ spiritual” and “cor¬ 
poreal ” are exact equivalents of “ immaterial ” and “ material ” 
in the minds of ancient speculators on these topics. The 
“spiritual body ” of the risen dead (1 Cor. xv.) is not the 
“natural” “ flesh and blood ” body. Paul does not teach the 
resurrection of the body in the ordinary sense of the word 
“body”; a fact, often overlooked, but pregnant with many 
consequences. 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


321 


His residence is heaven, where he is surrounded 
by the ordered hosts of good spirits ; his angels, or 
messengers, and the executors of his will through¬ 
out the universe. 

On the other hand, the chief of the bad spirits 
is Satan, the devil par excellence. He and his 
company of demons are free to roam through all 
parts of the universe, except the heaven. These 
bad spirits are far superior to man in power and 
subtlety; and their whole energies are devoted to 
bringing physical and moral evils upon him, and 
to thwarting, so far as their power goes, the 
benevolent intentions of the Supreme Being. In 
fact, the souls and bodies of men form both the 
theatre and the prize of an incessant warfare 
between the good and the evil spirits—the powers 
of light and the powers of darkness. By leading 
Eve astray, Satan brought sin and death upon 
mankind. As the gods of the heathen, the demons 
are the founders and maintainers of idolatry; as 
the “ powers of the air ” they afflict mankind with 
pestilence and famine ; as “ unclean spirits ” they 
cause disease of mind and body. 

The significance of the appearance of Jesus, in 
the capacity of the Messiah, or Christ, is the 
reversal of the Satanic work by putting an end to 
both sin and death. He announces that the 
kingdom of God is at hand, when the “ Prince of 
this world ” shall be finally “ cast out ” (John xii. 
31) from the cosmos, as Jesus, during his earthly 


322 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


career, cast him out from individuals. Then will 
Satan and all his devilry, along with the wicked 
whom they have seduced to their destruction, be 
hurled into the abyss of unquenchable fire—there 
to endure continual torture, without a hope of 
winning pardon from the merciful God, their 
Father; or of moving the glorified Messiah to one 
more act of pitiful intercession; or even of 
interrupting, by a momentary sympathy with 
their wretchedness, the harmonious psalmody of 
their brother angels and men, eternally lapped in 
bliss unspeakable. 

The straitest Protestant, who refuses to admit 
the existence of any source of Divine truth, 
except the Bible, will not deny that every point 
of the pneumatological theory here set forth has 
ample scriptural warranty. The Gospels, the 
Acts, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse assert the 
existence of the devil, of his demons and of Hell, 
as plainly as they do that of God and his angels 
and Heaven. It is plain that the Messianic and 
the Satanic conceptions of the writers of these 
books are the obverse and the reverse of the same 
intellectual coinage. If we turn from Scripture 
to the traditions of the Fathers and the confes¬ 
sions of the Churches, it will appear that, in this 
one particular, at any rate, time has brought 
about no important deviation from primitive 
belief. From Justin onwards, it may often be a 
fair question whether God, or the devil, occupies 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 323 


a larger share of the attention of the Fathers. 
It is the devil who instigates the Roman authori¬ 
ties to persecute; the gods and goddesses of 
paganism are devils, and idolatry itself is an 
invention of Satan ; if a saint falls away from 
grace, it is by the seduction of the demon; if 
heresy arises, the devil has suggested it; and 
some of the Fathers 1 go so far as to challenge 
the pagans to a sort of exorcising match, by way 
of testing the truth of Christianity. Mediaeval 
Christianity is at one with patristic, on this head. 
The masses,’the clergy, the theologians, and the 
philosophers alike, live and move and have their 
being in a world full of demons, in which sorcery 
and possession are everyday occurrences. Nor 
did the Reformation make any difference. What¬ 
ever else Luther assailed, he left the traditional 
demonology untouched ; nor could any one have 
entertained a more hearty and uncompromising 
belief in the devil, than he and, at a later period, 
the Calvinistic fanatics of New England did. 
Finally, in these last years of the nineteenth 
century, the demonological hypotheses of the first 
century are, explicitly or implicitly, held and 
occasionally acted upon by the immense majority 
of Christians of all confessions. 

1 Tertullian ( Apolog. adv. Gentes, cap. xxiii.) thus challenges 
the Roman authorities : let them bring a possessed person into 
the presence of a Christian before their tribunal, and if the 
demon does not confess himself to be such, on the order of the 
Christian, let the Christian be executed out of hand. 


324 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


Only here and there has the progress of scien¬ 
tific thought, outside the ecclesiastical world, so 
far affected Christians, that they and their 
teachers fight shy of the demonology of their 
creed. They are fain to conceal their real dis¬ 
belief in one half of Christian doctrine by judi¬ 
cious silence about it; or by flight to those 
refuges for the logically destitute, accommodation 
or allegory. But the faithful who fly to allegory 
in order to escape absurdity resemble nothing so 
much as the sheep in the fable who—to save their 
lives—-jumped into the pit. The allegory pit is 
too commodious, is ready to swallow up so much 
more than one wants to put into it. If the story 
of the temptation is an allegory; if the early 
recognition of Jesus as the Son of God by the 
demons is an allegory ; if the plain declaration of 
the writer of the first Epistle of John (iii. 8), 
“ To this end was the Son of God manifested, 
that He might destroy the works of the devil,” is 
allegorical, then the Pauline version of the Fall 
may be allegorical, and still more the words of 
consecration of the Eucharist, or the promise of 
the second coming; in fact, there is not a dogma 
of ecclesiastical Christianity the scriptural basis 
of which may not be whittled away by a similar 
process. 

As to accommodation, let any honest man who 
can read the New Testament ask himself whether 
Jesus and his immediate friends and disciples can 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


325 


be dishonoured more grossly than by the supposi¬ 
tion that they said and did that which is attri¬ 
buted to them; while, in reality, they disbelieved 
in Satan and his demons, in possession and in 
exorcism ? 1 

An eminent theologian has justly observed that 
we have no right to look at the propositions of the 
Christian faith with one eye open and the other 
shut. (Tract 85, p. 29.) It really is not permis¬ 
sible to see, with one eye, that Jesus is affirmed 
to declare the personality and the Fatherhood of 
God, His loving providence and His accessibility 
to prayer; and to shut the other to the no less 
definite teaching ascribed to Jesus, in regard to 
the personality and the misanthropy of the devil, 
his malignant watchfulness, and his subjection to 
exorcistic formulae and rites. Jesus is made to 
say that the devil “ was a murderer from the 
beginning ” (John viii. 44) by the same authority 
as that upon which we depend for his asserted 
declaration that “God is a spirit” (John iv. 24). 

To those who admit the authority of the famous 
Vincentian dictum that the doctrine which has 
been held “ always, everywhere, and by all ” is to 
be received as authoritative, the demonology 
must possess a higher sanction than any other 
Christian dogma, except, perhaps, those of the 
Resurrection and of the Messiahship of Jesus; 

1 See the expression of orthodox opinion upon the “accommo¬ 
dation” subterfuge already cited above, p. 217. 


326 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


Tor it would be difficult to name any other points 
of doctrine on which the Nazarene does not differ 
from the Christian, and the different historical 
stages and contemporary subdivisions of Chris¬ 
tianity from one another. And, if the demon¬ 
ology is accepted, there can be no reason for 
rejecting all those miracles in which demons play 
a part. The Gadarene story fits into the general 
scheme of Christianity; and the evidence for 
“ Legion” and their doings is just as good as any 
other in the New Testament for the doctrine 
which the story illustrates. 

It was with the purpose of bringing this great 
fact into prominence; of getting people to open 
both their eyes when they look at Ecclesiasticism ; 
that I devoted so much space to that miraculous 
story which happens to be one of the best types 
of its class. And I could not wish for a better 
justification of the course I have adopted, than 
the fact that my heroically consistent adversary 
has declared his implicit belief in the Gadarene 
story and (by necessary consequence) in the 
Christian demonology as a whole. It must be 
obvious, by this time, that, if the account of the 
spiritual world given in the New Testament, pro¬ 
fessedly on the authority of Jesus, is true, then 
the demonological half of that account must be 
just as true as the other half. And, therefore, 
those who question the demonology, or try to 
explain it away, deny the truth of what Jesus 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 327 


said, and are, in ecclesiastical terminology, “ Infi¬ 
dels ’ just as much as those who deny the 
spirituality of God. This is as plain as anything 
can well be, and the dilemma for my opponent 
was either to assert that the Gadarene pig-bedevil¬ 
ment actually occurred, or to write himself down 
an “ Infidel.” As was to be expected, he chose 
the former alternative ; and I may express my 
great satisfaction at finding that there is one spot 
of common ground on which both he and I stand. 
So far as I can judge, we are agreed to state one 
of the broad issues between the consequences of 
agnostic principles (as I draw them), and the con¬ 
sequences of ecclesiastical dogmatism (as he ac¬ 
cepts it), as follows. 

Ecclesiasticism says: The demonology of the 
Gospels is an essential part of that account of 
that spiritual world, the truth of which it de¬ 
clares to be certified by Jesus. 

Agnosticism ( mejudicc ) says : There is no good 
evidence of the existence of a demoniac spiritual 
world, and much reason for doubting it. 

Hereupon the ecclesiastic may observe: Your 
doubt means that you disbelieve Jesus ; therefore 
you are an “ Infidel ” instead of an “ Agnostic.” 
To which the agnostic may reply : No; for two 
reasons: first, because your evidence that Jesus 
said what you say he said is worth very little; 
and secondly, because a man may be an agnostic, 
in the sense of admitting he has no positive 


328 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


knowledge, and yet consider that he has more or 
less probable ground for accepting any given 
hypothesis about the spiritual world. Just as a 
man may frankly declare that he has no means of 
knowing whether the planets generally are in¬ 
habited or not, and yet may think one of the two 
possible hypotheses more likely than the other, so 
he may admit that he has no means of knowing 
anything about the spiritual world, and yet may 
think one or other of the current views on the 
subject, to some extent, probable: 

The second answ r er is so obviously valid that it 
needs no discussion. I draw attention to it simply 
in justice to those agnostics who may attach 
greater value than I do to any sort of pneumato- 
logical speculations; and not because I wish to 
escape the responsibility of declaring that, whether 
Jesus sanctioned the demonological part of Chris¬ 
tianity or not, I unhesitatingly reject it. The 
first answer, on the other hand, opens up the 
whole question of the claim of the biblical and 
other sources, from which hypotheses concerning 
the spiritual w^orld are derived, to be regarded as 
unimpeachable historical evidence as to matters of 
fact. 

Now, in respect of the trustworthiness of the 
Gospel narratives, I was anxious to get rid of the 
common assumption that the determination of the 
authorship and of the dates of these works is a 
matter of fundamental importance. That assump- 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 329 


tion is based upon the notion that what contem¬ 
porary witnesses say must be true, or, at least, has 
always a primd facie claim to be so regarded ; so 
that if the writers of any of the Gospels were 
contemporaries of the events (and still more if 
they were in the position of eye-witnesses) the 
miracles they narrate must be historically true, 
and, consequently, the demonology which they 
involve must be accepted. But the story of the 
“ Translation of the blessed martyrs Marcellinus 
and Petrus,” and the other considerations (to 
which endless additions might have been made 
from the Fathers and the mediaeval writers) set 
forth in a preceding essay, yield, in my judgment, 
satisfactory proof that, where the miraculous is 
concerned, neither considerable intellectual ability, 
nor undoubted honesty, nor knowledge of the 
world, nor proved faithfulness as civil historians, 
nor profound piety, on the part of eye-witnesses 
and contemporaries, affords any guarantee of the 
objective truth of their statements, when we know 
that a firm belief in the miraculous was ingrained 
in their minds, and was the pre-supposition of 
their observations and reasonings. 

Therefore, although it be, as I believe, demon¬ 
strable that we have no real knowledge of the 
authorship, or of the date of composition of the 
Gospels, as they have come down to us, and 
that nothing better than more or less probable 
guesses can be arrived at on that subject, I have 


330 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


not cared to expend any space on the question. 
It will be admitted, I suppose, that the authors of 
the works attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 
John, whoever they may be, are personages whose 
capacity and judgment in the narration of ordin¬ 
ary events are not quite so well certified as those 
of Eginhard ; and we have seen what the value of 
Eginhard’s evidence is when the miraculous is in 
question. 

I have been careful to explain that the argu¬ 
ments which I have used in the course of this 
discussion are not new; that they are historical 
and have nothing to do with what is commonly 
called science; and that they are all, to the best 
of my belief, to be found in the works of theologi¬ 
ans of repute. 

The position which I have taken up, that the 
evidence in favour of such miracles as those 
recorded by Eginhard, and consequently of 
mediaeval demonology, is quite as good as that in 
favour of such miracles as the Gadarene, and con¬ 
sequently of Nazarene demonology, is none of my 
discovery. Its strength was, wittingly or un¬ 
wittingly, suggested, a century and a half ago, by 
a theological scholar of eminence ; and it has been, 
if not exactly occupied, yet so fortified with bas¬ 
tions and redoubts by a living ecclesiastical 
Yauban, that, in my judgment, it has been ren¬ 
dered impregnable. In the early part of the last 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 331 


century, the ecclesiastical mind in this country 
was much exercised by the question, not exactly 
of miracles, the occurrence of which in biblical 
times was axiomatic, but by the problem: When 
did miracles cease ? Anglican divines were quite 
sure that no miracles had happened in their day, 
nor for some time past; they were equally sure 
that they happened sixteen or seventeen centuries 
earlier. And it was a vital question for them to 
determine at what point of time, between this 
terminus a quo and that terminus ad quem> 
miracles came to an end. 

The Anglicans and the Romanists agreed in 
the assumption that the possession of the gift of 
miracle-working was primd facie evidence of the 
soundness of the faith of the miracle-workers. 
The supposition that miraculous powers might be 
wielded by heretics (though it might be supported 
by high authority) led to consequences too fright¬ 
ful to be entertained by people who were busied 
in building their dogmatic house on the sands of 
early Church history. If, as the Romanists main¬ 
tained, an unbroken series of genuine miracles 
adorned the records of their Church, throughout 
the whole of its existence, no Anglican could 
lightly venture to accuse them of doctrinal cor¬ 
ruption. Hence, the Anglicans, who indulged in 
such accusations, were bound to prove the modern, 
the mediaeval Roman, and the later Patristic, 
miracles false; and to shut off the wonder-working 


332 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


power from the Church at the exact point of 
time when Anglican doctrine ceased and Roman 
doctrine began. With a little adjustment—a 
squeeze here and a pull there—the Christianity 
of the first three or four centuries might be made 
to fit, or seem to fit, pretty well into the Anglican 
scheme. So the miracles, from Justin say to 
Jerome, might be recognised; while, in later 
times, the Church having become “ corrupt ”— 
that is to say, having pursued one and the same 
line of development further than was pleasing to 
Anglicans—its alleged miracles must needs be 
shams and impostures. 

Under these circumstances, it may be imagined 
that the establishment of a scientific frontier 
between the earlier realm of supposed fact and 
the later of asserted delusion, had its difficulties ; 
and torrents of theological special pleading about 
the subject flowed from clerical pens ; until that 
learned and acute Anglican divine, Conyers 
Middleton, in his “ Free Inquiry,” tore the sophis¬ 
tical web they had laboriously woven to pieces, and 
demonstrated that the miracles of the patristic 
age, early and late, must stand or fall together, 
inasmuch as the evidence for the later is just as 
good as the evidence for the earlier wonders. If 
the one set are certified by contemporaneous 
witnesses of high repute, so are the other; and, 
in point of probability, there is not a pin to choose 
between the two. That is the solid and irrefrag- 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 333 


able result of Middleton’s contribution to the 
subject. But the Free Inquirer’s freedom had its 
limits; and he draws a sharp line of demarcation 
between the patristic and the New Testament 
miracles—on the professed ground that the 
accounts of the latter, being inspired, are out of 
the reach of criticism. 

A century later, the question was taken up by 
another divine, Middleton’s equal in learning and 
acuteness, and far his superior in subtlety and 
dialetic skill; who,though an Anglican, scorned the 
name of Protestant; and, while yet a Churchman, 
made it his business, to parade, with infinite skill, the 
utter hollowness of the arguments of those of his 
brother Churchmen who dreamed that they could 
be both Anglicans and Protestants. The argument 
of the “ Essay on the Miracles recorded in the Eccle¬ 
siastical History of the Early Ages” 1 by the present 
[1889] Roman Cardinal, but then Anglican Doctor, 
John Henry Newman, is compendiously stated by 
himself in the following passage :— 

If the miracles of Church history cannot be defended by the 
arguments of Leslie, Lyttleton, Paley, or Douglas, how many of 
the Scripture miracles satisfy their conditions ? (p. cvii). 

And, although the answer is not given in so many 
words, little doubt is left on the mind of the 

1 I quote the first edition (1843). A second edition appeared 
in 1870. Tract 85 of the Tracts for the Times should be read 
with this Essay. If I were called upon to compile a Primer of 
“Infidelity,” I think I should save myself trouble by making a 
selection from these works, and from the Essay on Development 
by the same author. 


334 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


reader, that, in the mind of the writer, it is: None. 
In fact, this conclusion is one which cannot be 
resisted, if the argument in favour of the Scripture 
miracles is based upon that which laymen, 
whether lawyers, or men of science, or historians, 
or ordinary men of affairs, call evidence. But 
there is something really impressive in the 
magnificent contempt with which, at times, Dr. 
Newman sweeps aside alike those who offer and 
those who demand such evidence. 

Some infidel authors advise us to accept no miracles which 
would not have a verdict in their favour in a court of justice ; 
that is, they employ against Scripture a weapon which Pro¬ 
testants would confine to attacks upon the Church ; as if moral 
and religious questions required legal proof, and evidence were 
the test of truth 1 (p. cvii). 

“ As if evidence were the test of truth ” !—although 
the truth in question is the occurrence, or the 
non-occurrence, of certain phenomena at a certain 
time and in a certain place. This sudden revelation 
of the great gulf fixed between the ecclesiastical 
and the scientific mind is enough to take away 
the breath of any one unfamiliar with the clerical 
organon. As if, one may retort, the assumption 
that miracles may, or have, served a moral or a 
religious end, in any way alters the fact that they 
profess to be historical events, things that actually 

1 Yet, when it suits his purpose, as in the Introduction to the 
Essay on Development, Dr. Newman can demand strict evidence 
in religious questions as sharply as any “infidel author” ; and 
he can even profess to yield to its force (Essay on Miracles, 1870 ; 
note, p. 391). 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 335 


happened; and, as such, must needs be exactly 
those subjects about which evidence is appropriate 
and legal proofs (which are such merely because 
they afford adequate evidence) may be justly 
demanded. The Gadarene miracle either hap¬ 
pened, or it did not. Whether the Gadarene 
“ question ” is moral or religious, or not, has 
nothing to do with the fact that it is a purely 
historical question whether the demons said what 
they are declared to have said, and the devil- 
possessed pigs did, or did not, rush over the heights 
bounding the Lake of Gennesaret on a certain day 
of a certain year, after A.D. 26 and before A.D. 36 * 
for vague and uncertain as New Testament 
chronology is, I suppose it may he assumed that 
the event in question, if it happened at all, took 
place during the procuratorship of Pilate. If that 
is not a matter about which evidence ought to be 
required, and not only legal, but strict scientific 
proof demanded by sane men who are asked to 
believe the story—what is ? Is a reasonable 
being to be seriously asked to credit statements, 
which, to put the case gently, are not exactly 
probable, and on the acceptance or rejection of 
which his whole view of life may depend, without 
asking for as much “ legal ” proof as would send 
an alleged pickpocket to gaol, or as would suffice 
to prove the validity of a disputed will ? 

“ Infidel authors ” (if, as I am assured, I may 
answer for them) will decline to waste time on 
137 


336 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


mere darkenings of counsel of this sort; but to 
those Anglicans who accept his premises, Dr. 
Newman is a truly formidable antagonist. What, 
indeed, are they to reply when he puts the very 
pertinent question:— 

whether persons who not merely question, but prejudge the 
Ecclesiastical miracles on the ground of their want of resem¬ 
blance, whatever that be, to those contained in Scripture—as 
if the Almighty could not do in the Christian Church what He 
had not already done at the time of its foundation, or under the 
Mosaic Covenant—whether such reasoners are not siding with 
the sceptic, 

and 

whether it is not a happy inconsistency by which they con¬ 
tinue to believe the Scriptures while they reject the Church 1 
(p. liii). 

Again, I invite Anglican orthodoxy to consider this 
passage :— 

the narrative of the combats of St. Antony with evil spirits, is a 
development rather than a contradiction of revelation, viz. of 
such texts as speak of Satan being cast out by prayer and 
fasting. To be shocked, then, at the miracles of Ecclesiastical 
history, or to ridicule them for their strangeness, is no part of a 
scriptural philosophy (pp. liii-liv). 

Further on, Dr. Newman declares that it has 
been admitted 

that a distinct line can be drawn in point of character and cir¬ 
cumstance between the miracles of Scripture and of Church 

1 Compare Tract 85, p. 110 ; “I am persuaded that were men 
but consistent who oppose the Church doctrines as being 
unscriptural, they would vindicate the Jews for rejecting the 
Gospel. ” 



IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 337 


history; but this is by no means the case (p, lv). . . . specb 
mens are not wanting in the history of the Church, of miracles 
as awful in their character and as momentous in their effects as 
those which are recorded in Scripture. The fire interrupting 
the rebuilding of the Jewish temple, and the death of Alius, are 
instances, in Ecclesiastical history, of such solemn events. On 
the other hand, difficult instances in the Scripture history are 
such as these : the serpent in Eden, the Ark, Jacob’s vision for 
the multiplication of his cattle, the speaking of Balaam's ass, 
the axe swimming at Elisha’s word, the miracle on the swine, 
and various instances of prayers or prophecies, in which, as in 
that of Noah’s blessing and curse, words which seem the result 
of private feeling are expressly or virtually ascribed to a Divine 
suggestion (p. lvi). 


Who is to gainsay our ecclesiastical authority 
here ? “ Infidel authors ” might be accused of a 

wish to ridicule the Scripture miracles by putting 
them on a level with the remarkable story about 
the fire which stopped the rebuilding of the 
Temple, or that about the death of Arius—but 
Dr. Newman is above suspicion. The pity is that 
his list of what he delicately terms '‘difficult” 
instances is so short. Why omit the manufacture 
of Eve out of Adam’s rib, on the strict historical 
accuracy of which the chief argument of the 
defenders of an iniquitous portion of our present 
marriage law depends? Why leave out the 
account of the “ Bene Elohim ” and their gallan¬ 
tries, on which a large part of the worst practices 
of the mediaeval inquisitors into witchcraft was 
based ? Why forget the angel who wrestled with 
Jacob, and, as the account suggests, somewhat 


338 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


over-stepped the bounds of fair play, at the end of 
the struggle? Surely, we must agree with Dr. 
Newman that, if all these camels have gone down, 
it savours of affectation to strain at such gnats as 
the sudden ailment of Arius in the midst of his 
deadly, if prayerful , 1 enemies ; and the fiery explo¬ 
sion which stopped the Julian building operations. 
Though the words of the “ Conclusion ” of the 
“ Essay on Miracles ” may, perhaps, be quoted 
against me, I may express my satisfaction at finding 
myself in substantial accordance with a theologian 
above all suspicion of heterodoxy. With all my 
heart, I can declare my belief that there is just as 
good reason for believing in the miraculous slay¬ 
ing of the man who fell short of the Athanasian 
power of affirming contradictories, with respect to 
the nature of the Godhead, as there is for believing 
in the stories of the serpent and the ark told in 
Genesis, the speaking of Balaam’s ass in Numbers, 
or the floating of the axe, at Elisha’s order, in the 
second book of Kings. 


It is one of the peculiarities of a really sound 

1 According to Dr. Newman, “This prayer [that of Bishop 
Alexander, who begged God to ‘ take Arius away ’] is said to 
have been offered about 3 p.m. on the Saturday ; that same 
evening Arius was in the great square of Constantine, when he 
was suddenly seized with indisposition” (p. clxx). The 
“infidel” Gibbon seems to have dared to suggest that “an 
option between poison and miracle” is presented by this 
case ; and, it must be admitted, that, if the Bishop had been 
within the reach of a modern police magistrate, things might 
have gone hardly with him. Modern “ Infidels,” possessed of a 


tx AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 339 

argument that it is susceptible of the fullest 
development; and that it sometimes leads to con¬ 
clusions unexpected by those who employ it. To 
my mind, it is impossible to refuse to follow Dr. 
Newman when he extends his reasoning, from the 
miracles of the patristic and mediaeval ages back¬ 
ward in time, as far as miracles are recorded. 
But, if the rules of logic are valid, I feel com¬ 
pelled to extend the argument forwards to the 
alleged Roman miracles of the present day, which 
Dr. Newman might not have admitted, but which 
Cardinal Newman may hardly reject. Beyond 
question, there is as good, or perhaps better, 
evidence for the miracles worked by our Lady of 
Lourdes, as there is for the floating of Elisha’s axe, 
or the speaking of Balaam’s ass. But we must go 
still further ; there is a modern system of thauma- 
turgy and demonology which is just as well 
certified as the ancient . 1 Veracious, excellent, 

slight knowledge of chemistry, are not unlikely, with no less 
audacity, to suggest an “option between fire-damp and miracle” 
in seeking for the cause of the fiery outburst at Jerusalem. 

1 A writer in a spiritualist journal takes me roundly to task 
for venturing to doubt the historical and literal truth of the 
Gadarene story. The following passage in his letter is worth 
quotation : “ Now to the materialistic and scientific mind, to the 
uninitiated in spiritual verities, certainly this story of the 
Gadarene or Gergesene swine presents insurmountable difficulties ; 
it seems grotesque and nonsensical. To the experienced, trained, 
and cultivated Spiritualist this miracle is, as I am prepared to 
show, one of the most instructive, the most profoundly useful, 
and the most beneficent which Jesus ever wrought in 
the whole course of His pilgrimage of redemption on earth.” 
Just so. And the first page of this same journal presents the 
following advertisement, among others of the same kidney :— 

“To Wealthy Spiritualists. — A Lady Medium of tried 


340 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY IX 

sometimes learned and acute persons, even philo¬ 
sophers of no mean pretensions, testify to the 
“ levitation ” of bodies much heavier than Elisha’s 
axe; to the existence of “ spirits ” who, to the 
mere tactile sense, have been indistinguishable 
from flesh and blood; and, occasionally, have 
wrestled with all the vigour of Jacob’s opponent; 
yet, further, to the speech, in the language of raps, 
of spiritual beings, whose discourses, in point of 
coherence and value, are far inferior to that of 
Balaam’s humble but sagacious steed. I have not 
the smallest doubt that, if these were persecuting 
times, there is many a worthy “ spiritualist ” who 
would cheerfully go to the stake in support of his 
pneumatological faith; and furnish evidence, after 
Paley’s own heart, in proof of the truth of his 
doctrines. Not a few modern divines, doubtless 
struck by the impossibility of refusing the spirit¬ 
ualist evidence, if the ecclesiastical evidence is 
accepted, and deprived of any a priori objection 
by their implicit belief in Christian Demonology, 
show themselves ready to take poor Sludge 
seriously, and to believe that he ^is possessed by 
other devils than those of need, greed, and vain- 
glory. 

Under these circumstances, it was to be 

power wishes to meet with an elderly gentleman who would be 
willing to give her a comfortable home and maintenance in 
Exchange for her Spiritualistic services, as her guides consider 
her health is too delicate for public sittings : London preferred.— 
Address ‘Mary,’ Office of Light.” 

Are we going back to the days of the Judges, when wealthy 
Mioah set up his private ephod, teraphim. and Levite? 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


341 


expected, though it is none the less interesting to 
note the fact, that the arguments of the latest 
school of “ spiritualists ” present a wonderful 
family likeness to those which adorn the subtle 
disquisitions of the advocate of ecclesiastical 
miracles of forty years ago. It is unfortunate for 
the “ spiritualists ” that, over and over again, cele¬ 
brated and trusted media, who really, in some 
respects, call to mind the Montanist 1 and gnostic 
seers of the second century, are either proved in 
courts of law to be fraudulent impostors; or, in 
sheer weariness, as it would seem, of the honest 
dupes who swear by them, spontaneously confess 
their long-continued iniquities, as the Fox women 
did the other day in New York . 2 But, whenever 
a catastrophe of this kind takes place, the believers 
are no wise dismayed by it. They freely admit 
that not only the media, but the spirits whom they 
summon, are sadly apt to lose sight of the elemen¬ 
tary principles of right and wrong; and they 
triumphantly ask : How does the occurrence of 

1 Consider Tertullian’s “sister” (“hodie apud nos”), who 
conversed with angels, saw and heard mysteries, knew men’s 
thoughts, and prescribed medicine for their bodies {Be Anima , 
cap. 9). Tertullian tells us that this woman saw the soul as 
corporeal, and described its colour and shape. The “infidel” 
will probably be unable to refrain from insulting the memory 
of the ecstatic saint by the remark, that Tertullian’s known 
views about the corporeality of the soul may have had some¬ 
thing to do with the remarkable perceptive powers of the 
Montanist medium, in whose revelations of the spiritual world he 
took such profound interest. 

2 See the New York World for Sunday, 21st October, 1888 ; 
and the Report of the Seybert Commission Philadelphia, 1887. 


342 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


occasional impostures disprove the genuine mani¬ 
festations (that is to say, all those which have not 
yet been proved to be impostures or delusions) ? 
And, in this, they unconsciously plagiarise from the 
churchman, who just as freely admits that many 
ecclesiastical miracles may have been forged ; and 
asks, with calm contempt, not only of legal proofs, 
but of common-sense probability, Why does it 
follow that none are to be supposed genuine ? 
I must say, however, that the spiritualists, so far 
as I know, do not venture to outrage right reason 
so boldly as the ecclesiastics. They do not sneer 
at “ evidence ” ; nor repudiate the requirement of 
legal proofs. In fact, there can be no doubt that 
the spiritualists produce better evidence for their 
manifestations than can be shown either for the 
miraculous death of Arius, or for the Invention of 
the Cross . 1 

From the “ levitation ” of the axe at one end 
of a period of near three thousand years to the 
“levitation” of Sludge & Co. at the other end, 
there is a complete continuity of the miraculous, 
with every gradation, from the childish to the 
stupendous, from the gratification of a caprice to 
the illustration of sublime truth. There is no 

1 Dr. Newman’s observation that the miraculous multipli¬ 
cation of the pieces of the true cross (with which “the whole 
world is filled,” according to Cyril of Jerusalem ; and of which 
some say there are enough extant to build a man-of-war) is no 
more wonderful than that of the loaves and fishes, is one that I do 
not see my way to contradict. See Essay on Miracles, 2d ed. 
p. 163. 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 343 


drawing a line in the series that might be set out 
of plausibly attested cases of spiritual interven¬ 
tion. If one is true, all may be true; if one is 
false, all may be false. 

This is, to my mind, the inevitable result of 
that method of reasoning which is applied to the 
confutation of Protestantism, with so much suc¬ 
cess, by one of the acutest and subtlest disput¬ 
ants who have ever championed Ecclesiasticism 
—and one cannot put his claims to acuteness 
and subtlety higher. 

. . . the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever 
there were a safe truth it is this. . . . “To be deep in history 
is to cease to be a Protestant.” 1 

I have not a shadow of doubt that these anti- 
Protestant epigrams are profoundly true. But I 
have as little that, in the same sense, the “ Chris¬ 
tianity of history is not ” Romanism; and that 
to be deeper in history is to cease to be a 
Romanist. The reasons which compel my doubts 
about the compatibility of the Roman doctrine, 
or any other form of Catholicism, with history, 
arise out of exactly the same line of argument as 
that adopted by Dr. Newman in the famous 
essay which I have just cited. If, with one hand, 
Dr. Newman has destroyed Protestantism, he has 

1 An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine , by J. H. 

Newman, D.D., pp. 7 and 8. (1878.) 


344 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


annihilated Romanism with the other; and the 
total result of his ambidextral efforts is to shake 
Christianity to its foundations. Nor was any one 
better aware that this must be the inevitable 
result of his arguments—if the world should 
refuse to accept Roman doctrines and Roman 
miracles—than the writer of Tract 85. 

Dr. Newman made his choice and passed over 
to the Roman Church half a century ago. Some 
of those who were essentially in harmony with 
his views preceded, and many followed him. But 
many remained; and, as the quondam Puseyite 
and present Ritualistic party, they are continuing 
that work of sapping and mining the Protest¬ 
antism of the Anglican Church which he and his 
friends so ably commenced. At the present time, 
they have no little claim to be considered 
victorious all along the line. I am old enough to 
recollect the small beginnings of the Tractarian 
party; and I am amazed when I consider the 
present position of their heirs. Their little leaven 
has leavened, if not the whole, yet a very large 
lump of the Anglican Church; which is now 
pretty much of a preparatory school for Papistry. 
So that it really behoves Englishmen (who, as I 
have been informed by high authority, are all 
legally, members of the State Church, if they 
profess to belong to no other sect) to wake up to 
what that powerful organisation is about, and 
whither it is tending. On this point, the writings 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 345 


of Dr. Newman, while he still remained within 
the Anglican fold, are a vast store of the best 
and the most authoritative information. His 
doctrines on Ecclesiastical miracles and on 
Development are the corner-stones of the Tract- 
arian fabric. He believed that his arguments led 
either Romeward, or to what ecclesiastics call 
“ Infidelity,” and I call Agnosticism. I believe 
that he was quite right in this conviction ; but 
while he chooses the one alternative, I choose the 
other; as he rejects Protestantism on the ground 
of its incompatibility wfith history, so, a fortiori , 
I conceive that Romanism ought to be rejected ; 
and that an impartial consideration of the evi¬ 
dence must refuse the authority of Jesus to 
anything more than the Nazarenism of James 
and Peter and John. And let it not be supposed 
that this is a mere “infidel” perversion of the facts. 
No one has more openly and clearly admitted the 
possibility that they may be fairly interpreted in 
this way than Dr. Newman. If, he says, there 
are texts which seem to show that Jesus contem¬ 
plated the evangelisation of the heathen: 

. . . Did not the Apostles hear our Lord ? and what was their 
impression from what they heard ? Is it not certain that the 
Apostles did not gather this truth from His teaching ? (Tract 
85, p. 63). 

He said, ‘ ‘ Preach the Gospel to every creature. ” These words 
need have only meant “ Bring all men to Christianity through 
Judaism.” Make them Jews, that they may enjoy Christ’s 
privileges, which are lodged in Judaism; teach them those 


346 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


rites and ceremonies, circumcision and the like, which hitherto 
have been dead ordinances, and now are living: and so the 
Apostles seem to have understood them {ibid. p. 65). 


So far as Nazarenism differentiated itself from 
contemporary orthodox Judaism, it seems to have 
tended towards a revival of the ethical and 
religious spirit of the prophetic age, accompanied 
by the belief in Jesus as the Messiah, and by 
various accretions which had grown round Judaism 
subsequently to the exile. To these belong the 
doctrines of the Resurrection, of the Last Judg¬ 
ment, of Heaven and Hell; of the hierarchy of 
good angels; of Satan and the hierarchy of evil 
spirits. And there is very strong ground for 
believing that all these doctrines, at least in the 
shapes in which they were held by the post-exilic 
Jews, were derived from Persian and Babylonian 1 
sources, and are essentially of heathen origin. 

How far Jesus positively sanctioned all these 
indrainings of circumjacent Paganism into Juda¬ 
ism ; how far any one has a right to declare, that 
the refusal to accept one. or other of these 
doctrines, as ascertained verities, comes to the 
same thing as contradicting Jesus, it appears to 

1 Dr. Newman faces this question with his customary ability. 
“Now, I own, I am not at all solicitous to deny that this 
doctrine of an apostate Angel and his hosts was gained 
from Babylon : it might still be Divine nevertheless. God who 
made the prophet’s ass speak, and thereby instructed the 
prophet, might instruct His Church by means of heathen 
Babylon ” (Tract 85, p. 83). There seems to be no end to the 
apologetic burden that Balaam’s ass can carry. 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 347 


me not easy to say. But it is ha,rdly less difficult 
to conceive that he could have distinctly nega¬ 
tived any of them; and, more especially, that 
demonology which has been accepted by the 
Christian Churches, in every age and under all 
their mutual antagonisms. But, I repeat my 
conviction that, whether Jesus sanctioned the 
demonology of his time and nation or not, it is 
doomed. The future of Christianity, as a dog¬ 
matic system and apart from the old Israelitish 
ethics which it has appropriated and developed, 
lies in the answer which mankind will eventually 
give to the question, whether they are prepared to 
believe such stories as the Gadarene and the 
pneumatological hypotheses which go with it, or 
not. My belief is they will decline to do any¬ 
thing of the sort, whenever and wherever their 
minds have been disciplined by science. And 
that discipline must, and will, at once follow and 
lead the footsteps of advancing civilisation. 

The preceding pages were written before I 
became acquainted with the contents of the May 
number of the “ Nineteenth Century,” wherein I 
discover many things which are decidedly not to 
my advantage. It would appear that “ evasion ” 
is my chief resource, “ incapacity for strict argu¬ 
ment ” and “ rottenness of ratiocination ” my main 
mental characteristics, and that it is “barely 
credible” that a statement which I profess to 


348 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY IX 

make of my own knowledge is true. All which 
things I notice, merely to illustrate the great 
truth, forced on me by long experience, that it is 
only from those who enjoy the blessing of a firm 
hold of the Christian faith that such manifesta¬ 
tions of meekness, patience, and charity are to be 
expected. 

I had imagined that no one who had read 
my preceding papers, could entertain a doubt as 
to my position m respect of the main issue, as 
it has been stated and restated by my opponent: 

an Agnosticism which knows nothing of the relation of man to 
God must not only refuse belief to our Lord’s most undoubted 
teaching, but must deny the reality of the spiritual convictions 
in which He lived. 1 

That is said to be “ the simple question which is 
at issue between us,” and the three testimonies to 
that teaching and those convictions selected are 
the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, and 
the Story of the Passion. 

My answer, reduced to its briefest form, has 
been: In the first place, the evidence is such that 
the exact nature of the teachings and the convic¬ 
tions of Jesus is extremely uncertain; so that 
what ecclesiastics are pleased to call a denial of 
them may be nothing of the kind. And, in the 
second place, if Jesus taught the demonological 
system involved in the Gadarene story—if a belief 


1 Nineteenth Century , May 1889 (p. 701). 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 349 


in that system formed a part of the spiritual con¬ 
victions in which he lived and died—then I, for 
my part, unhesitatingly refuse belief in that 
teaching, and deny the reality of those spiritual 
convictions. And I go further and add, that, 
exactly in so far as it can be proved that Jesus 
sanctioned the essentially pagan demonological 
theories current among the Jews of his age, 
exactly in so far, for me, will his authority in 
any matter touching the spiritual world be weak¬ 
ened. 

With respect to the first half of my answer, I 
have pointed out that the Sermon on the Mount, 
as given m the first Gospel, is, in the opinion of 
the best critics, a “ mosaic work ” of materials 
derived from different sources, and I do not under¬ 
stand that this statement is challenged. The only 
other Gospel—the third—which contains some¬ 
thing like it, makes, not only the discourse, but the 
circumstances under which it was delivered, very 
different. Now, it is one thing to say that there 
was something real at the bottom of the two 
discourses—which is quite possible; and another 
to affirm that we have any right to say what that 
something was, or to fix upon any particular 
phrase and declare it to be a genuine utterance. 
Those who pursue theology as a science, and bring 
to the study an adequate knowledge of the ways of 
ancient historians, will find no difficulty in provid¬ 
ing illustrations of my meaning. I may supply 


350 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


one which has come within range of my own 
limited vision. 

In Josephus’s “ History of the Wars of the Jews ” 
(chap, xix.), that writer reports a speech which 
he says Herod made at the opening of a war with 
the Arabians. It is in the first person, and would 
naturally be supposed by the reader to be intended 
for a true version of what Herod said. In the 
“ Antiquities,” written some seventeen years later, 
the same writer gives another report, also in the 
first person, of Herod’s speech on the same 
occasion. This second oration is twice as long as 
the first and, though the general tenor of the two 
speeches is pretty much the same, there is hardly 
any verbal identity, and a good deal of matter is 
introduced into the one, which is absent from the 
other. Josephus prides himself on his accuracy ; 
people whose fathers might have heard Herod’s 
oration were his ‘ contemporaries; and yet his 
historical sense is so curiously undeveloped that 
he can, quite innocently, perpetrate an obvious 
literary fabrication; for one of the two accounts 
must be incorrect. Now, if I am asked whether I 
believe that Herod made some particular state¬ 
ment on this occasion; whether, for example, he 
uttered the pious aphorism, “ Where God is, there 
is both multitude and courage,” which is given in 
the “ Antiquities,” but not in the “ Wars,” I am 
compelled to say I do not know. One of the two 
reports must be erroneous, possibly both are: at 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


351 


any rate, I cannot tell how much of either is true. 
And, if some fervent admirer of the Idumean 
should build up a theory of Herod’s piety upon 
Josephus’s evidence that he propounded the 
aphorism, is it a “ mere evasion ” to say, in reply, 
that the evidence that he did utter it is worth¬ 
less ? 

It appears again that, adopting the tactics of 
Conachar when brought face to face with Hal o’ 
the Wynd, I have been trying to get my simple- 
minded adversary to follow me on a wild-goose 
chase through the early history of Christianity, in 
the hope of escaping impending defeat on the 
main issue. But I may be permitted to point out 
that there is an alternative hypothesis which 
equally fits the facts; and that, after all, there 
may have been method in the madness of my 
supposed panic. 

For suppose it to be established that Gentile 
Christianity was a totally different thing from the 
Nazarenism of Jesus and his immediate disciples; 
suppose it to be demonstrable that, as early as the 
sixth decade of our era at least, there were violent 
divergencies of opinion among the followers of 
Jesus ; suppose it to be hardly doubtful that the 
Gospels and the Acts took their present shapes 
under the influence of those divergencies; sup¬ 
pose that their authors, and those through whose 
hands they passed, had notions of historical vera¬ 
city not more eccentric than those which Josephus 
138 


352 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


occasionally displays: surely the chances that the 
Gospels are altogether trustworthy records of the 
teachings of Jesus become very slender. And, 
since the whole of the case of the other* side is 
based on the supposition that they are accurate 
records (especially of speeches, about which ancient 
historians are so curiously loose), I really do ven¬ 
ture to submit that this part of my argument bears 
very seriously on the main issue; and, as ratio¬ 
cination, is sound to the core. 

Again, when I passed by the topic of the 
speeches of Jesus on the Cross, it appears that I 
could have had no other motive than the dictates 
of my native evasiveness. An ecclesiastical dig¬ 
nitary may have respectable reasons for declining 
a fencing match “in sight of Gethsemane and 
Calvary ”; but an ecclesiastical “ Infidel ” ! Never. 
It is obviously impossible that, in the belief that 
“ the greater includes the less,” I, having declared 
the Gospel evidence in general, as to the sayings of 
Jesus, to be of questionable value, thought it need¬ 
less to select for illustration of my views, those 
particular instances which were likely to be most 
offensive to persons of another way of thinking. 
But any supposition that may have been enter¬ 
tained that the old familiar tones of the ecclesias¬ 
tical war-drum will tempt me to engage in such 
needless discussion had better be renounced. I 
shall do nothing of the kind. Let it suffice that 
I ask my readers to turn to the twenty-third 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


353 


chapter of Luke (revised version), verse thirty-four, 
and he will find in the margin 

Some ancient authorities omit: And Jesus said “ Father, for¬ 
give them, for they know not what they do.” 

So that, even as late as the fourth century, 
there were ancient authorities, indeed some of the 
most ancient and weightiest, who either did not 
know of this utterance, so often quoted as char¬ 
acteristic of Jesus, or did not believe it had been 
uttered. 

Many years ago, I received an anonymous letter, 
which abused me heartily for my want of moral 
courage in not speaking out. I thought that one 
of the oddest charges an anonymous letter-writer 
could bring. But I am not sure that the plentiful 
sowing of the pages of the article with which I am 
dealing with accusations of evasion, may not seem 
odder to those who consider that the main strength 
of the answers with which I have been favoured 
(in this review and elsewhere) is devoted, not to 
anything in the text of my first paper, but to a 
note which occurs at p. 212. In this I say: 

Dr. Wace tells us : “It may be asked how far we can rely on 
the accounts we possess of our Lord’s teaching on these subjects.” 
And he seems to think the question appropriately answered by 
the assertion that it “ought to be regarded as settled by M. 
Renan’s practical surrender of the adverse case.” 

I requested Dr. Wace to point out the passages 
of M. Renans works in which, as he affirms, this 


354 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


“ practical surrender ” (not merely as to the age 
and authorship of the Gospels, be it observed, but 
as to their historical value) is made, and he has 
been so good as to do so. Now let us consider 
the parts of Dr. Wace’s citation from Renan which 
are relevant to the issue :— 

The author of this Gospel [Luke] is certainly the same as the 
author of the Acts of the Apostles. Now the author of the 
Acts seems to be a companion of St. Paul—a character which 
accords completely with St. Luke. I know that more than one 
objection may be opposed to this reasoning : but one thing, at 
all events, is beyond doubt, namely, that the author of the 
third Gospel and of the Acts is a man who belonged to the 
second apostoiic generation ; and this suffices for our purpose. 

This is a curious “ practical surrender of the 
adverse case.” M. Renan thinks that there is no 
doubt that the author of the third Gospel is the 
author of the Acts—a conclusion in which I 
suppose critics generally agree. He goes on to 
remark that this person seems to be a companion 
of St. Paul, and adds that Luke was a companion 
of St. Paul. Then, somewhat needlessly, M. 
Renan points out that there is more than one 
objection to jumping, from such data as these, to 
the conclusion that “ Luke ” is the writer of the 
third Gospel. And, finally, M. Renan is content 
to reduce that which is “ beyond doubt ” to the 
fact that the author of the two books is a man of 
the second apostolic generation. Well, it seems to 
me that I could agree with all that M. Renan 


TX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


355 


considers “ beyond doubt ” here, without surren¬ 
dering anything, either “ practically ” or theoretic¬ 
ally. 

Dr. Wace (“Nineteenth Century,” March, p. 
363) states that he derives the above citation 
from the preface to the 15th edition of the “ Yie 
de Jesus.” My copy of “ Les fivangiles, dated 
1877, contains a list of Renan’s “ GEuvres Com¬ 
pletes,” at the head of which I find “Yie de 
Jesus,” 15® Edition. It is, therefore, a later work 
than the edition of the “Yie de Jesus ” which Dr. 
Wace quotes. Now “Les Evangiles,” as its name 
implies, treats fully of the questions respecting 
the date and authorship of the Gospels; and any 
one who desired, not merely to use M. Renan’s 
expressions for controversial purposes, but to give 
a fair account of his views in their full signifi¬ 
cance, would, I think, refer to the later source. 

If this course had been taken, Dr. Wace might 
have found some as decided expressions of opinion, 
in favour of Luke’s authorship of the third Gospel, 
as he has discovered in “ The Apostles.” I men¬ 
tion this circumstance, because I desire to point 
out that, taking even the strongest of Renan’s 
statements, I am still at a loss to see how it 
justifies that large-sounding phrase, “ practical 
surrender of the adverse case.” For, on p. 438 of 
“Les Evangiles,” Renan speaks of the way in 
which Luke’s “ excellent intentions ” have led him 
to torture history in the Acts; he declares Luke 


356 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


to be the founder of that “ eternal fiction which is 
called ecclesiastical history ” ; and, on the pre¬ 
ceding page, he talks of the “myth” of the 
Ascension—with its “ mise en scene voulue.” At 
p. 435, I find “ Luc, ou l’auteur quel qu’il soit du 
troisi&me iWangile”; at p. 280, the accounts of 
the Passion, the death and the resurrection of 
Jesus, are said to be “ peu historiques ”; at p. 283, 
“ La valeur historique du troisieme ^Ivangile est 
surement moindre que celles des deux premiers.” 
A Pyrrhic sort of victory for orthodoxy, this 
“ surrender ” ! And, all the while, the scientific 
student of theology knows that, the more reason 
there may be to believe that Luke was the com¬ 
panion of Paul, the more doubtful becomes his 
credibility V he really wrote the Acts. For, in 
that case, he could not fail to have been acquainted 
with Paul’s account of the Jerusalem conference 
and he must have consciously misrepresented it. 

We may next turn to the essential part of Dr. 
Wace’s citation (“Nineteenth Century,” p.365) 
touching the first Gospel:— 

St. Matthew evidently deserves peculiar confidence for 
the discourses. Here are the “oracles”—the very notes taken 
while the memory of the instruction of Jesus was living and 
definite. 

M. Renan here expresses the very general 
opinion as to the existence of a collection of 
“ logia,” having a different origin from the text 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 


357 


in wliich they are embedded, in Matthew. 
“Notes” are somewhat suggestive of a shorthand 
writer, but the suggestion is unintentional, for M. 
Renan assumes that these “notes” were taken, 
not at the time of the delivery of the “logia” but 
subsequently, while (as he assumes) the memory 
of them was living and definite; so that, in this 
very citation, M. Renan leaves open the question 
of the general historical value of the first Gospel; 
while it is obvious that the accuracy of “ notes ” 
taken, not at the time of delivery, but from 
memory, is a matter about which more than one 
opinion may be fairly held. Moreover, Renan 
expressly calls attention to the difficulty of dis¬ 
tinguishings the authentic “ logia ” from later 
additions of the same kind (“ Les Evangiles 
p. 201). The fact is, there is no contradiction 
here to that opinion about the first Gospel which 
is expressed in “ Les Evangiles ” (p. 175). 

The text of the so-called Matthew supposes the pre-existence 
of that of Mark, and does little more than complete it. He 
completes it in two fashions—first, by the insertion of those 
long discourses which gave their chief value to the Hebrew 
Gospels ; then by adding traditions of a more modern forma¬ 
tion, results of successive developments of the legend, and to 
which the Christian consciousness already attached infinite 
value. 

M. Renan goes on to suggest that besides 
«Mark,” “ pseudo-Matthew " used an Aramaic 
version of the Gospel, originally set forth in that 


358 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


dialect. Finally, as to the second Gospel (“Nine¬ 
teenth Century,” p. 365) :— 

He [Mark] is full of minute observations, proceeding, beyond 
doubt, from an eye-witness. There is nothing to conflict with 
the supposition that this eye-witness . . . was the Apostle 

Peter himself, as Papias has it. 

Let us consider this citation by the light of 
“ Les 6vangiles ” :— 

This work, although composed after the death of Peter, was, 
in a sense, the work of Peter ; it represents the way in which 
Peter was accustomed to relate the life of Jesus (p. 116). 

M. Renan goes on to say that, as an historical 
document, the Gospel of Mark has a great 
superiority (p. 116); but Mark has a motive for 
omitting the discourses, and he attaches a “ puerile 
importance” to miracles (p. 117). The Gospel of 
Mark is less a legend, than a biography written 
with credulity (p. 118). It would be rash to say 
that Mark has not been interpolated and re¬ 
touched (p. 120). 

If any one thinks that I have not been warranted 
in drawing a sharp distinction between “ scientific 
theologians” and “counsels for creeds”; or that 
my warning against the too ready acceptance of 
certain declarations as to the state of biblical 
criticism was needless; or that my anxiety as to 
the sense of the word “practical” was super¬ 
fluous ; let him compare the statement that M. 
Renan has made a “ practical surrender of the 


ix 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


359 


adverse case ” with the facts just set forth. For 
what is the adverse case ? The question, as Dr. 
Wace puts it, is, “ It may be asked how far can 
we rely on the accounts we possess of our Lord’s 
teaching on these subjects.” It will be obvious 
that M. Renan’s statements amount to an adverse 
answer—to a “ practical ” denial that any great 
reliance can he placed on these accounts. He 
does not believe that Matthew, the apostle, wrote 
the first Gospel; he does not profess to know who 
is responsible for the collection of " logia,” or how 
many of them are authentic ; though he calls the 
second Gospel the most historical, he points out 
that it is written with credulity, and may have 
been interpolated and retouched ; and, as to the 
author, “ quel qu’il soit,” of the third Gospel, who 
is to “ rely on the accounts ” of a writer, who 
deserves the cavalier treatment which “ Luke ” 
meets with at M. Renan’s hands ? 

I repeat what I have already more than once 
said, that the question of the age and the author¬ 
ship of the Gospels has not, in my judgment, the 
importance which is so commonly assigned to it; 
for the simple reason that the reports, even of 
eye-witnesses, would not suffice to justify belief in 
a large and essential part of their contents; on 
the contrary, these reports would discredit the 
witnesses. The Gadarene miracle, for example, is 
so extremely improbable, that the fact of its being 
reported by three, even independent, authorities 


3G0 AGNOSTICISM AN1) CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


could not justify belief in it, unless we bad the 
clearest evidence as to their capacity as observers 
and as interpreters of their observations. But it 
is evident that the three authorities are not inde¬ 
pendent ; that they have simply adopted a legend, 
of which there were two versions; and instead of 
their proving its truth, it suggests their super¬ 
stitious credulity : so that if “ Matthew,” “ Mark,” 
and “ Luke ” are really responsible for the Gospels, 
it is not the better for the Gadarene story, but 
the worse for them. 

A wonderful amount of controversial capital 
has been made out of my assertion in the note to 
which I have referred, as an obiter dictum of no 
consequence to my argument, that if Renan’s 
work 1 were non-extant, the main results of 
biblical criticism, as set forth in the works of 
Strauss, Baur, Reuss, and Volkmar, for example, 
would not be sensibly affected. I thought I had 
explained it satisfactorily already, but it seems 
that my explanation has only exhibited still more 
of my native perversity, so I ask for one more 
chance. 

In the course of the historical development of 
any branch of science, what is universally observed 
is this : that the men who make epochs, and are 
the real architects of the fabric of exact know¬ 
ledge, are those who introduce fruitful ideas or 

1 I trust jt may not be supposed that I undervalue M. Renan’s 
labours, or intended to speak slightingly of them. 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 3G1 


methods. As a rule, the man who does this 
pushes his idea, or his method, too far; or, if he 
does not, his school is sure to do so ; and those 
who follow have to reduce his work to its proper 
value, and assign it its place in the whole. Not 
unfrequently, they, in their turn, overdo the 
critical process, and, in trying to eliminate error, 
throw away truth. 

Thus, as I said, Linnaeus, Buffon, Cuvier, 
Lamarck, really “ set forth the results ” of a 
developing science, although they often heartily 
contradict one another. Notwithstanding this 
circumstance, modern classificatory method and 
nomenclature have largely grown out of the work 
of Linnaeus; the modern conception of biology, as 
a science, and of its relation to climatology, geo¬ 
graphy, and geology, are, as largely, rooted in the 
results of the labours of Buffon ; comparative 
anatomy and palaeontology owe a vast debt to 
Cuvier’s results: while invertebrate zoology and 
the revival of the idea of evolution are intimately 
dependent on the results of the work of Lamarck. 
In other words, the main results of biology up to 
the early years of this century are to be found in, 
or spring out of, the works of these men. 

So, if I mistake not, Strauss, if he did not 
originate the idea of taking the mythopceic faculty 
into account in the development of the Gospel 
narratives, and though he may have exaggerated 
the influence of that faculty, obliged scientific 


362 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


theology, hereafter, to take that element into 
serious consideration ; so Baur, in giving promin¬ 
ence to the cardinal fact of the divergence of the 
Nazarene and Pauline tendencies in the primitive 
Church; so Reuss,in setting a marvellous example 
of the cool and dispassionate application of the 
principles of scientific criticism over the whole 
field of Scripture; so Volkmar, in his clear and 
forcible statement of the Nazarene limitations of 
Jesus, contributed results of permanent value in 
scientific theology. I took these names as they 
occurred to me. Undoubtedly, I might have 
advantageously added to them; perhaps, I might 
have made a better selection. But it really is 
absurd to try to make out that I did not know 
that these writers widely disagree ; and I believe 
that no scientific theologian will deny that, in 
principle, what I have said is perfectly correct. 
Ecclesiastical advocates, of course, cannot be 
expected to take this view of the matter. To 
them, these mere seekers after truth, in so far as 
their results are unfavourable to the creed the 
clerics have to support, are more or less “ infidels,” 
or favourers of “ infidelity ”; and the only thing 
they care to see, or probably can see, is the fact 
that, in a great many matters, the truth-seekers 
differ from one another, aud therefore can easily 
be exhibited to the public, as if they did nothing 
else; as if any one who referred to their having, 
each and all, contributed his share to the results 


IX 


AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 3G3 


of theological science, was merely showing his 
ignorance; and as if a charge of inconsistency 
could be based on the fact that he himself often 
disagrees with what they say. I have never 
lent a shadow of foundation to the assumption 
that I am a follower of either Strauss, or Baur, or 
Beuss, or Yolkmar, or Renan; my debt to these 
eminent men—so far my superiors in theological 
knowledge—is, indeed, great; yet it is not for 
their opinions, but for those I have been able to 
form for myself, by their help. 

In Agnosticism: a Rejoinder (p. 266), I have 
referred to the difficulties under which those pro¬ 
fessors of the science of theology, whose tenure of 
their posts depends on the results of their investi¬ 
gations, must labour; and, in a note, I add— 

Imagine that all onr chairs of Astronomy had been founded 
in the fourteenth century, and that their incumbents were 
bound to sign Ptolemaic articles. In that case, with every 
respect for the efforts of persons thus hampered to attain and 
expound the truth, I think men of common sense would go 
elsewhere to learn astronomy. 

I did not write this paragraph without a know¬ 
ledge that its sense would be open to the kind of 
perversion which it has suffered; but, if that was 
clear, the necessity for the statement was still 
clearer. It is my deliberate opinion : I reiterate 
it; and I say that, in my judgment, it is extremely 
inexpedient that any subject which calls itself a 
science should be entrusted to teachers who are 


364 AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 


IX 


debarred from freely following out scientific 
methods to their legitimate conclusions, whatever 
those conclusions may be. If I may borrow a 
phrase paraded at the Church Congress, I think it 
“ ought to be unpleasant ” for any man of science 
to find himself in the position of such a teacher. 

Human nature is not altered by seating it in a 
professorial chair, even of theology. I have very 
little doubt that if, in the year 1859, the tenure 
of my office had depended upon my adherence to 
the doctrines of Cuvier, the objections to them set 
forth in the “ Origin of Species ” would have had 
a halo of gravity about them that, being free to 
teach what I pleased, I failed to discover. And, 
in making that statement, it does not appear to 
me that I am confessing that I should have been 
debarred by “ selfish interests ” from making 
candid inquiry, or that I should have been biassed 
by “ sordid motives.” I hope that even such a 
fragment of moral sense as may remain in an 
ecclesiastical “infidel” might have got me through 
the difficulty; but it would be unworthy to deny, 
or disguise, the fact that a very serious difficulty 
must have been created for me by the nature of 
my tenure. And let it be observed that the 
temptation, in my case, would have been far 
slighter than in that of a professor of theology; 
whatever biological doctrine I had repudiated, 
nobody I cared for would have thought the worse 
of me for so doing. No scientific journals would 


IX 


•AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 365 


have howled me down, as the religious newspapers 
howled down my too honest friend, the late 
Bishop of Natal; nor would my colleagues of the 
Royal Society have turned their backs upon me, 
as his episcopal colleagues boycotted him. 

I say these facts are obvious, and that it is 
wholesome and needful that they should be 
stated. It is in the interests of theology, if it be 
a science, and it is in the interests of those 
teachers of theology who desire to be something 
better than counsel for creeds, that it should be 
taken to heart. The seeker after theological 
truth and that only, will no more suppose that I 
have insulted him, than the prisoner who works 
in fetters will try to pick a quarrel with me, if I 
suggest that he would get on better if the fetters 
were knocked off; unless indeed, as it is said does 
happen in the course of long captivities, that the 
victim at length ceases to feel the weight of his 
chains, or even takes to hugging them, as if they 
were honourable ornaments . 1 

1 To-day’s Times contains a report of a remarkable speech by 
Prince Bismarck, in which he tells the Reichstag that he has 
long given up investing in foreign stock, lest so doing should 
mislead his judgment in his transactions with foreign states. 
Does this declaration prove that the Chancellor accuses himself 
of being “sordid” and “ selfish” ; or does it not rather show 
that, even in dealing with himself, he remains the man of 
realities ? 


X 

THE KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 

[1890] 

I HAD fondly hoped that Mr. Gladstone and I had 
come to an end of disputation, and that the 
hatchet of war was finally superseded by the 
calumet, which, as Mr. Gladstone, I believe, 
objects to tobacco, I was quite willing to smoke 
for both. But I have had, once again, to discover 
that the adage that whoso seeks peace will ensue 
it, is a somewhat hasty generalisation. The 
renowned warrior with whom it is my misfortune 
to be opposed in most things has dug up the axe 
and is on the war-path once more. The weapon 
has been wielded with all the dexterity which 
long practice has conferred on a past master in 
craft, whether of wood or state. And I have 
reason to believe that the simpler sort of the 
great tribe which he heads, imagine that my scalp 
is already on its way to adorn their big chiefs 
wigwam. I am glad therefore to be able to 


I 


KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 367 


relieve any anxieties which my friends may 
entertain without delay. I assure them that my 
skull retains its normal covering, and that though, 
naturally, I may have felt alarmed, nothing 
serious has happened. My doughty adversary 
has merely performed a war dance, and his blows 
have for the most part cut the air. I regret to 
add, however, that by misadventure, and I am 
afraid I must say carelessness, he has inflicted 
one or two severe contusions on himself. 

When the noise of approaching battle roused 
me from the dreams of peace which occupy my 
retirement, I was glad to observe (since I must 
fight) that the campaign was to be opened upon 
a new field. When the contest raged over the 
Pentateuclial myth of the creation, Mr. Gladstone’s 
manifest want of acquaintance with the facts and 
principles involved in the discussion, no less than 
with the best literature on his own side of the 
subject, gave me the uncomfortable feeling that I 
had my adversary at a disadvantage. The sun of 
science, at my back, was in his eyes. But, on the 
present occasion, we are happily on an equality. 
History and Biblical criticism are as much, or 
as little, my vocation as they are that of Mr. 
Gladstone; the blinding from too much light, or 
the blindness from too little, may be presumed to 
be equally shared by both of us. 

Mr. Gladstone takes up his new position in the 
country of the Gadarenes. His strategic sense 
139 


368 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE x 

justly leads him to see that the authority of the 
teachings of the synoptic Gospels, touching the 
nature of the spiritual world, turns upon the 
acceptance, or the rejection, of the Gadarene and 
other like stories. As we accept, or repudiate, 
such histories as that of the possessed pigs, so 
shall we accept, or reject, the witness of the 
synoptics to such miraculous interventions. 

It is exactly because these stories constitute 
the key-stone of the orthodox arch, that I 
originally drew attention to them; and, in spite 
of my longing for peace, I am truly obliged to 
Mr. Gladstone for compelling me to place my case 
before the public once more. It may be thought 
that this is a work of supererogation by those 
who are aware that my essay is the subject of 
attack in a work so largely circulated as the 
“ Impregnable Hock of Holy Scripture ”; and who 
may possibly, in their simplicity, assume that it 
must be truthfully set forth in that work. But 
the warmest admirers of Mr. Gladstone will hardly 
be prepared to maintain that mathematical accu¬ 
racy in stating the opinions of an opponent is the 
most prominent feature of his controversial method. 
And what follows will show that, in the present 
case, the desire to be fair and accurate, the 
existence of which I am bound to assume, has 
not borne as much fruit as might have been 
expected. 

In referring to the statement of the narrators, 


X 


KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 369 


that the herd of swine perished in consequence of 
the entrance into them of the demons by the per¬ 
mission, or order, of Jesus of Nazareth, I said: 

“ Everything that I know of law and justice 
convinces me that the wanton destruction of other 
people’s property is a misdemeanour of evil 
example ” (“ Nineteenth Century,” February, 

1889, p. 172). 

Mr. Gladstone has not found it convenient to 
cite this passage; and, in view of various con¬ 
siderations, I dare not assume that he would assent 
to it, without sundry subtle modifications which, 
for me, might possibly rob it of its argumentative 
value. But, until the proposition is seriously 
controverted, I shall assume it to he true, and 
content myself with warning the reader that 
neither he nor I have any grounds for assuming 
Mr. Gladstone’s concurrence. With this caution, 
I proceed to remark that I think it may be 
granted that the people whose herd of 2000 swine 
(more or fewer) was suddenly destroyed suffered 
great loss and damage. And it is quite certain 
that the narrators of the Gadarene story do not, 
in any way, refer to the point of morality and 
legality thus raised; as I said, they show no 
inkling of the moral and legal difficulties which 
arise. 

Such being the facts of the case, I submit that 
for those who admit the principle laid down, the 
conclusion which I have drawn necessarily follows; 


370 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 


X 


though I repeat that, since Mr. Gladstone does 
not explicitly admit the principle, I am far from 
suggesting that he is bound by its logical con¬ 
sequences. However, I distinctly reiterate the 
opinion that any one who acted in the way 
described in the story would, in my judgment, 
be guilty of “ a misdemeanour of evil example.” 
About that point I desire to leave no ambiguity 
whatever; and it follows that, if I believed the 
story, I should have no hesitation in applying 
this judgment to the chief actor in it. 

But, if any one will do me the favour to turn 
to the paper in which these passages occur, he 
will find that a considerable part of it is devoted 
to the exposure of the familiar trick of the 
“ counsel for creeds,” who, when they wish to 
profit by the easily stirred odium theologicum, are 
careful to confuse disbelief in a narrative of a 
man’s act, or disapproval of the acts as narrated, 
with disbelieving and vilipending the man himself. 
If I say that “ according to paragraphs in several 
newspapers, my valued Separatist friend A. B. has 
houghed a lot of cattle, which he considered to be 
unlawfully in the possession of an Irish land- 
grabber ; that, in my opinion, any such act is a 
misdemeanour of evil example ; hut, that I utterly 
disbelieve the whole story and have no doubt that 
it is a mere fabrication : ” it really appears to me 
that, if any one charges me with calling A. B. an 
immoral misdemeanant, I should be justified in 


X 


KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 371 


using very strong language respecting either his 
sanity or his veracity. And, if an analogous charge 
has been brought in reference to the Gadarene 
story, there is certainly no excuse producible, on 
account of any lack of plain speech on my part. 
Surely no language can be more explicit than that 
which follows : 

“ I can discern no escape from this dilemma; 
either Jesus said what he is reported to have said, 
or he did not. In the former case, it is inevitable 
that his authority on matters connected with the 
* unseen world * should be roughly shaken ; in the 
latter, the blow falls upon the authority of the 
synoptic Gospels” (p. 173). “The choice then 
lies between discrediting those who compiled the 
Gospel biographies and disbelieving the Master, 
whom they, simple souls, thought to honour by 
preserving such traditions of the exercise of his 
authority over Satan’s invisible world ” (p. 174)* 
And I leave no shadow of doubt as to my own 
choice: “ After what has been said, I do not 
think that any sensible man, unless he happen to 
be angry, will accuse me of ‘ contradicting the Lord 
and his Apostles ’ if I reiterate my total disbelief 
in the whole Gadarene story ” (p. 178). 

I am afraid, therefore, that Mr. Gladstone must 
have been exceedingly angry when he committed 
himself to such a statement as follows : 

So, then, after eighteen centuries of worship offered to our 
Lord by the most cultivated, the most developed, and the most 


372 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 


X 


progressive portion of the human race, it has been reserved to a 
scientific inquirer to discover that He was no better than a law¬ 
breaker and an evil-doer. . . . How, in such a matter, came the 
honours of originality to be reserved to our time and to Professor 
Huxley? (Pp. 269, 270.) 

Truly, the hatchet is hardly a weapon of pre¬ 
cision, hut would seem to have rather more the 
character of the boomerang, which returns to 
damage the reckless thrower. Doubtless such 
incidents are somewhat ludicrous. But they have 
a very serious side ; and, if I rated the opinion ot 
those who blindly follow Mr. Gladstone’s leading, 
but not light, in these matters, much higher than 
the great Duke of Wellington’s famous standard 
of minimum value, I think I might fairly beg 
them to reflect upon the general bearings of this 
particular example of his controversial method. 
I imagine it can hardly commend itself to their 
cool judgment. 

After this tragi-comical ending to what an old 
historian calls a “ robustious and rough coming 
on ”; and after some praises of the provisions of 
the Mosaic law in the matter of not eating pork—- 
in which, as pork disagrees with me and for some 
other reasons, I am much disposed to concur, 
though I do not see what they have to do with 
the matter in hand—comes the serious onslaught. 

Mr. Huxley, exercising his rapid judgment on the text, does 
not appear to have encumbered himself with the labour of in¬ 
quiring what anybody else had known or said about it. He has 


X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 373 

thus missed a point which might have been set up in support of 
his accusation against our Lord. (P. 273.) 

Unhappily for my comfort, I have been much 
exercised in controversy during the past thirty 
years ; and the only compensation for the loss of 
time and the trials of temper which it has inflicted 
upon me, is that I have come to regard it as a 
branch of the fine arts, and to take an impartial and 
aesthetic interest in the way in which it is conducted, 
even by those whose efforts are directed against 
myself. Now, from the purely artistic point of 
view (which, as we are all being told, has nothing to 
do with morals), I consider it an axiom, that one 
should never appear to doubt that the other side 
has performed the elementary duty of acquiring 
proper elementary information, unless there is 
demonstrative evidence to the contrary. And I 
think, though I admit that this may be a purely 
subjective appreciation, that (unless you are quite 
certain) there is a “want of finish,” as a great 
master of disputation once put it, about the sug¬ 
gestion that your opponent has missed a point on 
his own side. Because it may happen that he 
has not missed it at all, but only thought it un¬ 
worthy of serious notice. And if he proves that, 
the suggestion looks foolish. 

Merely noting the careful repetition of a charge, 
the absurdity of which has been sufficiently ex¬ 
posed above, I now ask my readers to accompany 
me on a little voyage of discovery in search of the 


374 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 


X 


side on which the rapid judgment and the 
ignorance of the literature of the subject lie. I 
think I may promise them very little trouble, and 
a good deal of entertainment. 

Mr. Gladstone is of opinion that the Gadarene 
swinefolk were “ Hebrews bound by the Mosaic 
law” (p. 274); and he conceives that it has not 
occurred to me to learn what may he said in 
favour of and against this view. He tells us 
that 

Some commentators have alleged the authority of Josephus 
for stating that Gadara was a city of Greeks rather than of Jews, 
from whence it might be inferred that to keep swine was inno¬ 
cent and lawful. (P. 273.) 

Mr. Gladstone then goes on to inform his 
readers that in his painstaking search after truth 
he has submitted to the labour of personally 
examining the writings of Josephus. Moreover, 
in a note, he positively exhibits an acquaintance, 
in addition, with the works of Bishop Wordsworth 
and of Archbishop Trench ; and even shows that 
he has read Hudson’s commentary on Josephus. 
And yet people say that our Biblical critics do 
not equal the Germans in research! But Mr. 
Gladstone’s citation of Cuvier and Sir John 
Herschel about the Creation myth, and his ignor¬ 
ance of all the best modern writings on his own 
side, produced a great impression on my mind. I 
have had the audacity to suspect that his ac¬ 
quaintance with what has been done iu Biblical 


X 


KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 375 


history might stand at no higher level than his 
information about the natural sciences. However 
unwillingly, I have felt bound to consider the 
possibility that Mr. Gladstone’s labours in this 
matter may have carried him no further than 
Josephus and the worthy, but somewhat antique, 
episcopal and other authorities to whom he refers; 
that even his reading of Josephus may have been 
of the most cursory nature, directed not to the 
understanding of his author, but to. the discovery 
of useful controversial matter; and that, in view 
of the not inconsiderable misrepresentation of my 
statements to which I have drawn attention, it 
might be that Mr. Gladstone’s exposition of the 
evidence of Josephus was not more trustworthy. 
I proceed to show that my previsions have been 
fully justified. I doubt if controversial literature 
contains anything more piquant than the story I 
have to unfold. 

That I should be reproved for rapidity of judg¬ 
ment is very just: however quaint the situation 
of Mr. Gladstone, as the reprover, may seem to 
people blessed with a sense of humour. But it is 
a quality, the defects of which have been painfully 
obvious to me all my life; and I try to keep my 
Pegasus—at best, a poor Shetland variety of that 
species of quadruped—at a respectable jog-trot, by 
loading him heavily with bales of reading. Those 
who took the trouble to study my paper in good 
faith and not for mere controversial purposes, 


376 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 


X 


have a right to know, that something more than a 
hasty glimpse of two or three passages of Josephus 
(even with as many episcopal works thrown in) 
lay at the back of the few paragraphs I devoted to 
the Gadarene story. I proceed to set forth, as 
briefly as I can, some results of that preparatory 
work. My artistic principles do not permit me, at 
present, to express a doubt that Mr. Gladstone 
was acquainted with the facts I am about to 
mention when he undertook to write. But, if he 
did know them, then both what he has said and 
what he has not said, his assertions and his 
omissions alike, will require a paragraph to them¬ 
selves. 

The common consent of the synoptic Gospels 
affirms that the miraculous transference of devils 
from a man, or men, to sundry pigs, took place 
somewhere on the eastern shore of the Lake of 
Tiberias ; “ on the other side of the sea over 
against Galilee,” the western shore being, without 
doubt, included in the latter province. But there 
is no such concord when we come to the name of 
the part of the eastern shore, on which, according 
to the story, Jesus and his disciples landed. In the 
revised version, Matthew calls it the “ country of 
the Gadarenes : ” Luke and Mark have “ Gerasenes.” 
In sundry very ancient manuscripts “ Gergesenes ” 
occurs. 

The existence of any place called Gergesa, how¬ 
ever, is declared by the weightiest authorities 


X KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 377 

whom I have consulted to be very questionable; 
and no such town is mentioned in the list of the 
cities of the Decapolis, in the territory of which 
(as it would seem from Mark v. 20) the transaction 
was supposed to take place. About Gerasa, on 
the other hand, there hangs no such doubt. It 
was a large and important member of the group 
of the Decapolitan cities. But Gerasa is more than 
thirty miles distant from the nearest part of the 
Lake of Tiberias, while the city mentioned in the 
narative could not have been very far off the scene 
of the event. However, as Gerasa was a very im¬ 
portant Hellenic city, not much more than a score 
of miles from Gadara, it is easily imaginable that 
a locality which was part of Decapolitan territory 
may have been spoken of as belonging to one of 
the two cities, when it really appertained to the 
other. After weighing all the arguments, no 
doubt remains on my mind that “ Gadarene ” 
is the proper reading. At the period under con¬ 
sideration, Gadara appears to have been a good- 
sized fortified town, about two miles in circum¬ 
ference. It was a place of considerable strategic 
importance, inasmuch as it lay on a high ridge at 
the point of intersection of the roads from Tiberias, 
Scythopolis, Damascus, and Gerasa. Three miles 
north from it, where the Tiberias road descended 
into the valley of the Hieromices, lay the famous 
hot springs and the fashionable baths of Amatha. 
On the north-east side, the remains of the extensive 


378 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 


X 


necropolis of Gadara are still to be seen. Innu¬ 
merable sepulchral chambers are excavated in the 
limestone cliffs, and many of them still contain 
sarcophaguses of basalt; while not a few are con¬ 
verted into dwellings by the inhabitants of the 
present village of Um Keis. The distance of 
Gadara from the south-eastern shore of the Lake 
of Tiberias is less than seven miles. The nearest 
of the other cities of the Decapolis, to the north, is 
Hippos, which also lay some seven miles off, in the 
south-eastern corner of the shore of the lake. In 
accordance with the ancient Hellenic practice, 
that each city should be surrounded by a certain 
amount of territory amenable to its jurisdiction, 1 
and on other grounds, it may be taken for 
certain that the intermediate country was divided 
between Gadara and Hippos; and that the citizens 
of Gadara had free access to a port on the lake. 
Hence the title of “ country of the Gadarenes ” 
applied to the locality of the porcine catastrophe 
becomes easily intelligible. The swine may well 
be imagined to have been feeding (as they do now 
in the adjacent region) on the hillsides, which slope 
somewhat steeply down to the lake from the north¬ 
ern boundary wall of the valley of the Hieromices 
(Nahr Yarmuk), about half-way between the city 


1 Thus Josephus (lib. ix.) says that his rival, Justus, per¬ 
suaded the citizens of Tiberias to “ set the villages that belonged 
to Gadara and Hippos on fire ; which villages were situated on 
the borders of Tiberias and of the region of Scythopolis. ” 


X 


KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 379 


and the shore, and doubtless lay well within the 
territory of the polis of Gadara. 

The proof that Gadara was, to all intents and pur¬ 
poses, a Gentile, and not a Jewish, city is complete. 
The date and the occasion of its foundation are 
unknown; but it certainly existed in the third 
century B.c. Antiochus the Great annexed it to 
his dominions in B.c. 198. After this, during 
the brief revival of Jewish autonomy, Alexander 
Jannseus took it; and for the first time, so far as 
the records go, it fell under Jewish rule. 1 From 
this it was rescued by Pompey (b.c. 63), who 
rebuilt the city and incorporated it with the 
province of Syria. In gratitude to the Romans 
for the dissolution of a hated union, the Gadarenes 
adopted the Pompeian era on their coinage. 
Gadara was a commercial centre of some import¬ 
ance, and therefore, it may be assumed, Jews 
settled in it, as they settled in almost all con¬ 
siderable Gentile cities. But a wholly mistaken 
estimate of the magnitude of the Jewish colony 
has been based upon the notion that Gabinius, 
proconsul of Syria in 57-55 B.C., seated one of the 
five sanhedrims in Gadara. Schiirer has pointed 
out that what he really did was to lodge one of 
them in Gazara, far away on the other side of the 
Jordan. This is one of the many errors which have 
arisen out of the confusion of the names Gadara, 
Gazara, and Ga&ara. 

1 It is said to have been destroyed by its captors. 


380 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE ' x 

Augustus made a present of Gadara to Herod 
the Great, as an appanage personal to himself; 
and, upon Herod’s death, recognising it to be a 
" Grecian city ” like Hippos and Gaza, 1 he trans¬ 
ferred it back to its former place in the province 
of Syria. That Herod made no effort to judaise 
his temporary possession, but rather the contrary, 
is obvious from the fact that the coins of Gadara, 
while under his rule, bear the image of Augustus 
with the superscription 'te/Saaro ?—a flying in the 
face of Jewish prejudices which, even he, did not 
dare to venture upon in Judaea. And I may 
remark that, if my co-trustee of the British 
Museum had taken the trouble to visit the 
splendid numismatic collection under our charge, 
he might have seen two coins of Gadara, one of 
the time of Tiberius and the other of that of 
Titus, each bearing the effigies of the emperor on 
the obverse: while the personified genius of the 
city is on the reverse of the former. Further, 
the well-known works of De Saulcy and of Ekhel 
would have supplied the information that, from 
the time of Augustus to that of Gordian, the 
Gadarene coinage had the same thoroughly Gen¬ 
tile character. Curious that a city of “ Hebrews 
bound by the Mosaic law ” should tolerate such a 
mint I 

1 “ But as to the Grecian cities, Gaza and Gadara and Hippos, 
he cut them off from the kingdom and added them to Syria.” 
—Josejihus, Wars, II. vi. 3. See also Antiquities , XVII. xi. 4. 


X 


KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 381 


Whatever increase in population the Ghetto of 
Gadara may have undergone, between B.c. 4 and 
A.D. 66, it nowise affected the gentile and anti- 
judaic character of the city at the outbreak of the 
great war ; for Josephus tells us that, immediately 
after the great massacre of Ciesarea, the revolted 
Jews “ laid waste the villages of the Syrians and 
their neighbouring cities, Philadelphia and Se- 
bonitis and Gerasa and Pella and Scythopolis, 
and after them Gadara and Hippos ” (“ Wars,” II. 
xviii. 1). I submit that, if Gadara had been a 
city of “ Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law,” the 
ravaging of their territory by their brother Jews, 
in revenge for the massacre of the Caesarean Jews 
by the Gentile population of that place, would 
surely have been a somewhat unaccountable pro¬ 
ceeding. But when we proceed a little further, to 
the fifth section of the chapter in which this state¬ 
ment occurs, the whole affair becomes intelligible 
enough. 

Besides this murder at Scythopolis, the other cities rose up 
against the Jews that were among them : those of Askelon slew 
two thousand five hundred, and those of Ptolemais two thousand, 
and put not a few into bonds ; those of Tyre also put a great 
number to death, but kept a greater number in prison ; more¬ 
over, those of Hippos and those of Gadara did the like, while 
ihey put to death the boldest of the Jews, but kept those of 
whom they were most afraid in custody ; as did the rest of the 
cities of Syria according as they every one either hated them or 
were afraid of them. 

Josephus is not always trustworthy, but he has 


382 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 


X 


no conceivable motive for altering facts here; be 
speaks of contemporary events, in which he him¬ 
self took an active part, and he characterises the 
cities in the way familiar to him. For Josephus, 
Gadara is just as much a Gentile city as 
Ptolemais; it was reserved for his latest commen¬ 
tator, either ignoring, or ignorant of, all this, to 
tell us that Gadara had a Hebrew population, 
bound by the Mosaic law. 

In the face of all this evidence, most of which 
has been put before serious students, with full 
reference to the needful authorities and in a 
thoroughly judicial manner, by Schurer in his 
classical work , 1 one reads with stupefaction the 
statement which Mr. Gladstone has thought fit to 
put before the uninstructed public: 

Some commentators have alleged the authority of Josephus 
for stating that Gadara was a city of Greeks rather than of Jews, 
from whence it might be inferred that to keep swine was inno¬ 
cent and lawful. This is not quite the place for a critical ex¬ 
amination of the matter; but I have examined it, and have 
satisfied myself that Josephus gives no reason whatever to 
suppose that the population of Gadara, and still less (if less may 
be) the population of the neighbourhood, and least of all the 
swine-herding or lower portion of that population, were other 
than Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law. (Pp. 373-4.) 

Even “rapid judgment” cannot be pleaded in 
excuse for this surprising statement, because a 
“Note on the Gadarene miracle” is added (in a 
special appendix), in which the references are 

1 Ge&chickte desj dischen Volkes im Zeitalter Christi, 18S6-90. 


X 


KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 383 


given to the passages of Josephus, by the im¬ 
proved interpretation of which, Mr. Gladstone 
has thus contrived to satisfy himself of the thing 
which is not. One of these is “ Antiquities ” XVII. 
xiii. 4, in which section, I regret to say, I can find 
no mention of Gadara. In “ Antiquities,” XVII. xi. 
4, however, there is a passage which would appear 
to be that which Mr. Gladstone means; and I will 
give it in full, although I have already cited part 
of it: 

There were also certain of the cities which paid tribute to 
Archelaus; Strato’s tower, and Sebaste, with Joppa and Jeru¬ 
salem ; for, as to Gaza, Gadara, and Hippos, they were Grecian 
cities, which Caesar separated from his government, and added 
them to the province of Syria. 

That is to say, Augustus simply restored the state 
of things which existed before he gave Gadara, 
then certainly a Gentile city, lying outside Judaea, 
to Herod as a mark of great personal favour. Yet 
Mr. Gladstone can gravely tell those who are not 
in a position to check his statements: 

The sense seems to be, not that these cities were inhabited by 
a Greek population, but that they had politically been taken out 
of Judaea and added to Syria, which I presume was classified as 
simply Hellenic, a portion of the great Greek empire erected by 
Alexander. (Pp. 295-6.) 

Mr. Gladstone’s next reference is to the “ Wars,” 
III. vii. 1: 

So Vespasian marched to the city Gadara, and took it upon 
the first onset, because he foun 1 it destitute of a considerable 
140 


384 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 


X 


number of men grown up fit for war. He then came into it, 
and slew all the youth, the Romans having no mercy on any age 
whatsoever ; and this was done out of the hatred they bore the 
nation, and because of the iniquity they had been guilty of in 
the affair of Cestius. 

Obviously, then, Gadara was an ultra-Jewish 
city. Q.E.D. But a student trained in the use 
of weapons of precision, rather than in that of 
rhetorical tomahawks, has had many and painful 
warnings to look well about him, before trusting an 
argument to the mercies of a passage, the context 
of which he has not carefully considered. If Mr. 
Gladstone had not been too much in a hurry to 
turn his imaginary prize to account—if he had 
paused just to look at the preceding chapter of 
Josephus—he would have discovered that his 
much haste meant very little speed. He would 
have found (“ Wars,” III. vi. 2) that Yespasian 
marched from his base, the port of Ptolemais 
(Acre), on the shores of the Mediterranean into 
Galilee; and, having dealt with the so-called 
“ Gadara,” was minded to finish with Jotapata, 
a strong place about fourteen miles south-east of 
Ptolemais, into which Josephus, who at first had 
fled to Tiberias, eventually threw himself— 
Yespasian arriving before Jotapata “the very 
next day.” Now, if any one will take a decent 
map of Ancient Palestine in hand, he will see that 
Jotapata, as I have said, lies about fourteen miles 
in a straight line east-south-east of Ptolemais, 


X 


KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 385 


while a certain town, “Gabara” (which was also 
held by the Jews), is situated, about the same 
distance, to the east of that port. Nothing can be 
more obvious than that Vespasian, wishing to 
advance from Ptolemais into Galilee, could not 
afford to leave these strongholds in the possession 
of the enemy; and, as Gabara would lie on his 
left flank when he moved to Jotapata, he took 
that city, whence his communications with his 
base could easily be threatened, first. It might 
really have been fair evidence of demoniac posses¬ 
sion, if the best general of Rome had marched 
forty odd miles, as the crow flies, through hostile 
Galilee, to take a city (which, moreover, had just 
tried to abolish its Jewish population) on the 
other side of the Jordan; and then marched back 
again to a place fourteen miles off his starting- 
point. 1 One would think that the most careless 
of readers must be startled by this incongruity 
into inquiring whether there might not be some¬ 
thing wrong with the text; and, if he had done so, 
he would have easily discovered that since the 
time of Reland, a century and a half ago, careful 
scholars have read Gabara for Gabara. 1 

Once more, I venture to point out that training 

1 If William the Conqueror, after fighting the battle o{ 
Hastings, had marched to capture Chichester and then returned 
to assault Rye, being all the while anxious to reach London, his 
proceedings would not have been more eccentric than Mr. Glad¬ 
stone must imagine those of Vespasian were. 

2 See Reland, Palestvm (1714), t. ii. p. 771. Also Robinson, 
Later Biblical Researches (1856), p 87 note. 


386 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWIXE 


1 


in the use of the weapons of precision of science 
may have its value in historical studies, if only in 
preventing the occurrence of droll blunders in 
geography. 

In the third citation (“ Wars,” IV. viL) Josephus 
tells us that Vespasian marched against “ Gadara,” 
which he calls the metropolis of Peraea (it was 
possibly the seat of a common festival of the 
Decapolitan cities), and entered it, without oppo¬ 
sition, the wealthy and powerful citizens having 
opened negotiations with him without the know¬ 
ledge of an opposite party, who, “ as being inferior 
in number to their enemies, who were within the 
city, and seeing the Romans very near the city” 
resolved to fly. Before doing so, however, they, 
after a fashion unfortunately too common among 
the Zealots, murdered and shockingly mutilated 
Dolesus, a man of the first rank, who had pro¬ 
moted the embassy to Vespasian; and then “ ran 
out of the city.” Hereupon, “the people of 
Gadara” (surely not this time “Hebrews bound 
by the Mosaic law ”) received Vespasian with joy¬ 
ful acclamations, voluntarily pulled down their 
wall, so that the city could not in future be used 
as a fortress by the Jews, and accepted a Roman 
garrison for their future protection. Granting 
that this Gadara really is the city of the 
Gadarenes, the reference, without citation, to the 
passage, in support of Mr. Gladstone’s contention 
seems rather remarkable. Taken in conjunction 


X 


KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 387 


with the shortly antecedent ravaging of the 
Gadarene territory by the Jews, in fact, better 
proof could hardly be expected of the real state of 
the case; namely, that the population of Gadara 
(and notably the wealthy and respectable part 
of it) was thoroughly Hellenic; though, as in 
Csesarea and elsewhere among the Palestinian 
cities, the rabble contained a considerable body of 
fanatical Jews, whose reckless ferocity made them, 
even though a mere minority of the population, a 
standing danger to the city. 

Thus Mr. Gladstone’s conclusion from his study 
of Josephus, that the population of Gadara were 
“ Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law,” turns out to 
depend upon nothing better than a marvellously 
complete misinterpretation of what that author 
says, combined with equally marvellous geogra¬ 
phical misunderstandings, long since exposed 
and rectified; while the positive evidence that 
Gadara, like other cities of the Decapolis, was 
thoroughly Hellenic in organisation, and essenti¬ 
ally Gentile in population, is overwhelming. 

And, that being the fact of the matter, patent 
to all who will take the trouble to enquire about 
what has been said about it, however obscure to 
those who merely talk of so doing, the thesis that 
the Gadarene swineherds, or owners, were Jews 
violating the Mosaic law shows itself to he an 
empty and most unfortunate guess. But really, 
whether they that kept the swine were Jews, or 


388 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 


I 


whether they were Gentiles, is a consideration 
which has no relevance whatever to my case. The 
legal provisions, which alone had authority over 
an inhabitant of the country of the Gadarenes, 
were the Gentile laws sanctioned by the Roman 
suzerain of the province of Syria, just as the only 
law, which has authority in England, is that re¬ 
cognised by the sovereign Legislature. Jewish 
communities in England may have their private 
code, as they doubtless had in Gadara. But an 
English magistrate, if called upon to enforce their 
peculiar laws, would dismiss the complainants 
from the judgment seat, let us hope with more 
politeness than Gallio did in a like case, but quite 
as firmly. Moreover, in the matter of keeping 
pigs, we may be quite certain that Gadarene law 
left everybody free to do as he pleased, indeed 
encouraged the practice rather than otherwise. 
Not only was pork one of the commonest and one 
of the most favourite articles of Roman diet; but, 
to both Greeks and Romans, the pig was a sacri¬ 
ficial animal of high importance. Sucking pigs 
played an important part in Hellenic purificatory 
rites; and everybody knows the significance of the 
Roman suovetaurilia, depicted on so many bas- 
reliefs. 

Under these circumstances, only the extreme 
need of a despairing “ reconciler ” drowning in a 
sea of adverse facts, can explain the catching at 
such a poor straw as the reckless guess that the 


X 


KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWIXE 389 


swineherds of the “country of the Gadarenes” 
were erring Jews, doing a little clandestine busi¬ 
ness on their own account. The endeavour to 
justify the asserted destruction of the swine by the 
analogy of breaking open a cask of smuggled 
spirits, and wasting their contents on the ground, 
is curiously unfortunate. Does Mr. Gladstone 
mean to suggest that a Frenchman landing at 
Dover, and coming upon a cask of smuggled brandy 
in the course of a stroll along the cliffs, has the 
right to break it open and waste its contents on 
the ground ? Yet the party of Galileans who, 
according to the narrative, landed and took a walk 
on the Gadarene territory, were as much foreigners 
in the Decapolis as Frenchmen would he at Dover. 
Herod Antipas, their sovereign, had no jurisdic¬ 
tion in the Decapolis—they were strangers and 
aliens, with no more right to interfere with a pig¬ 
keeping Hebrew, than I have a right to interfere 
with an English professor of the Israelitic faith, if 
I see a slice of ham on his plate. According to 
the law of the country in which these Galilean 
foreigners found themselves, men might keep pigs 
if they pleased. If the men who kept them were 
Jews, it might be permissible for the strangers to 
inform the religious authority acknowledged by the 
Jews of Gadara; but to interfere themselves, in such 
a matter, was a step devoid of either moral or legal 
justification. 

Suppose a modem English Sabbatarian fanatic. 


390 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 


X 


who believes, on the strength of his interpretation 
of the fourth commandment, that it is a deadly sin 
to work on the “ Lord’s Day,” sees a fellow Puritan 
yielding to the temptation of getting in his harvest 
on a fine Sunday morning—is the former justified 
in setting fire to the latter’s corn ? Would not 
an English court of justice speedily teach him 
better ? 

In truth, the government which permits private 
persons, on any pretext (especially pious and 
patriotic pretexts), to take the law into their own 
hands, fails in the performance of the primary 
duties of all governments; while those who set 
the example of such acts, or who approve them, or 
who fail to disapprove them, are doing their best 
to dissolve civil society : they are compassers of 
illegality and fautors of immorality. 

I fully understand that Mr. Gladstone may not 
see the matter in this light. He may possibly 
consider that the union of Gadara with the 
Decapolis,by Augustus, was a “ blackguard ” trans¬ 
action, which deprived Hellenic Gadarene law of 
all moral force ; and that it was quite proper for a 
Jewish Galilean, going back to the time when the 
land of the Girgashites was given to his ancestors, 
some 1500 years before, to act, as if the state of 
things which ought to obtain, in territory which 
traditionally, at any rate, belonged to his fore¬ 
fathers, did really exist. And, that being so, I 
can only say I do not agree with him, but leave 


X 


KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 391 


the matter to the appreciation of those of our 
countrymen, happily not yet the minority, who , 
believe that the first condition of enduring liberty 
is obedience to the law of the land. 

The end of the month drawing nigh, I thought 
it well to send away the manuscript of the fore¬ 
going pages yesterday, leaving open, in my own 
mind, the possibility of adding a succinct charac¬ 
terisation of Mr. Gladstone’s controversial methods 
as illustrated therein. This morning, however, I 
had the pleasure of reading a speech which I 
think must satisfy the requirements of the most 
fastidious of controversial artists ; and there occurs 
in it so concise, yet so complete, a delineation of 
Mr. Gladstone’s way of dealing with disputed 
questions of another kind, that no poor effort of 
mine could better it as a description of the aspect 
which his treatment of scientific, historical, and 
critical questions presents to me. 

The smallest examination would have told a man of his capa¬ 
city and of his experience that he was uttering the grossest 
exaggerations, that he was basing arguments upon the slightest 
hypotheses, and that his discussions only had to be critically 
examined by the most careless critic in order to show their 
intrinsic hollowness. 


Those who have followed me through this paper 
will hardly dispute the justice of this judgment, 
severe as it is. But the Chief Secretary for 


392 KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE 


X 


Ireland has science in the blood; and has the 
advantage of a natural, as well as a highly 
cultivated, aptitude for the use of methods of 
precision in investigation, and for the exact 
enunciation of the results thereby obtained. 


XI 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF MR. GLADSTONE’S 
CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 

[1891] 

The series of essays, in defence of the historical 
accuracy of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, 
contributed by Mr. Gladstone to “ Good Words,” 
having been revised and enlarged by their author, 
appeared last year as a separate volume, under 
the somewhat defiant title of “ The Impregnable 
Rock of Holy Scripture.” 

The last of these Essays, entitled “ Conclusion,” 
contains an attack, or rather several attacks, 
couched in language which certainly does not err 
upon the side of moderation or of courtesy, upon 
statements and opinions of mine. One of these 
assaults is a deliberately devised attempt, not 
merely to rouse the theological prejudices in¬ 
grained in the majority of Mr. Gladsone’s readers, 
but to hold me up as a person who has endeavoured 
to besmirch the personal character of the object of 
their veneration. For Mr. Gladstone asserts that 


394 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


XI 


I have undertaken to try “the character of our 
Lord ” (p. 268); and he tells the many who are, as 
I think unfortunately, predisposed to place im¬ 
plicit credit in his assertions, that it has been 
reserved for me to discover that Jesus “was no 
better than a law-breaker and an evil-doer! ” 
(p. 269). 

It was extremely easy for me to prove, as I did 
in the pages of this Review last December, that, 
under the most favourable interpretation, this 
amazing declaration must be ascribed to extreme 
confusion of thought. And, by bringing an 
abundance of good-will to the consideration of the 
subject, I have now convinced myself that it is 
right for me to admit that a person of Mr. Glad¬ 
stone’s intellectual acuteness really did mistake 
the reprobation of the course of conduct ascribed 
to Jesus, in a story of which I expressly say I do 
not believe a word, for an attack on his character 
and a declaration that he was “no better than a 
law-breaker, and an evil-doer.” At any rate, so far 
as I can see, this is what Mr. Gladstone wished 
to be believed when he wrote the following 

o 

passage:— 

I must, however, in passing, make the confession that I did 
not state with accuracy, as I ought to have done, the precise 
form of the accusation. I treated it as an imputation on the 
action of our Lord ; he replies that it is only an imputation on 
the narrative of three evangelists respecting Him. The differ¬ 
ence, from his point of view, is probably material, and I there¬ 
fore regret that I overlooked it. 1 

1 Nineteenth Century , February 1891, pp. 339-40. 




XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 395 


Considering the gravity of the error which is 
here admitted, the fashion of the withdrawal 
appears more singular than admirable. From my 
“ point of view ”—not from Mr. Gladstone’s 
apparently—the little discrepancy between the 
facts and Mr. Gladstone’s carefully offensive 
travesty of them is “ probably ” (only “ probably ”) 
material. However, as Mr Gladstone concludes 
with an official expression of regret for his error, 
it is my business to return an equally official ex¬ 
pression of gratitude for the attenuated reparation 
with which I am favoured. 

Having cleared this specimen of Mr. Gladstone’s 
controversial method out of the way, I may 
proceed to the next assault, that on a passage in 
an article on Agnosticism (“Nineteenth Century,” 
February 1889), published two years ago. I there 
said, in referring to the Gadarene story, “ Every¬ 
thing I know of law and justice convinces me 
that the wanton destruction of other people’s 
property is a misdemeanour of evil example.” 
On this, Mr. Gladstone, continuing his candid and 
urbane observations, remarks (‘Impregnable 
Rock,” p. 273) that, “ Exercising his rapid judg¬ 
ment on the text,” and “not inquiring what 
anybody else had known or said about it,” I had 
missed a point in support of that “accusation 
against our Lord ” which he has now been con¬ 
strained to admit I never made. 

The “point ” in question is that “ Gadara was a 


396 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


XI 


city of Greeks rather than of Jews, from whence 
it might be inferred that to keep swine was 
innocent and lawful.” I conceive that I have 
abundantly proved that Gadara answered exactly 
to the description here given of it; and I shall 
show, by and by, that Mr. Gladstone has used 
language which, to my mind, involves the admission 
that the authorities of the city were not Jews. 
But I have also taken a good deal of pains to 
show that the question thus raised is of no 
importance in relation to the main issue . 1 If 
Gadara was, as I maintain it was, a city of the 
Decapolis, Hellenistic in constitution and con¬ 
taining a predominantly Gentile population, my 
case is superabundantly fortified. On the other 
hand, if the hypothesis that Gadara was under 
Jewish government, which Mr. Gladstone seems 
sometimes to defend and sometimes to give up, 
were accepted, my case would be nowise weakened. 
At any rate, Gadara was not included within the 
jurisdiction of the tetrach of Galilee; if it had 
been, the Galileans who crossed over the lake to 

1 Neither is it of any consequence whether the locality of the 
supposed miracle was Gadara, or Gerasa, or Gergesa. But I may 
say that I was well.acquainted with Origen’s opinion respecting 
Gergesa. It is fully discussed and rejected in Riehm’s Hand- 
iv dr ter buck. In Kitto’s Biblical Cyelopccdia (ii. p. 51) Professor 
Porter remarks that Origen merely “ conjectures ” that Gergesa 
was indicated ; and he adds, “ Now, in a question of this kind 
conjectures cannot be admitted. We must implicitly follow the 
most ancient and creditable testimony, which clearly'pronounces 
in favour of TaSapr? vuv. This reading is adopted by Tischendorf, 
Alford, and Tregelies.” 


XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 397 


Gadara had no official status ; and they had no 
more civil right to punish law-breakers than any 
other strangers. 

In my turn, however, I may remark that there 
is a “ point ” which appears to have escaped Mr. 
Gladstone’s notice. And that is somewhat un¬ 
fortunate, because his whole argument turns upon 
it. Mr. Gladstone assumes, as a matter of course, 
that pig-keeping was an offence against the “ Law 
of Moses”; and, therefore, that Jews who kept 
pigs were as much liable to legal pains and 
penalties as Englishmen who smuggle brandy 
(“ Impregnable Rock,” p. 274). 

There can be no doubt that, according to the 
Law, as it is defined in the Pentateuch, the pig 
was an “unclean” animal, and that pork was 
a forbidden article of diet. Moreover, since pigs 
are hardly likely to be kept for the mere love of 
those unsavoury animals, pig-owning, or swine- 
herding, must have been, and evidently was 
regarded as a suspicious and degrading occupation 
by strict Jews, in the first century A.D. But I 
should like to know on what provision of the 
Mosaic Law, as it is laid down in the Pentateuch, 
Mr. Gladstone bases the assumption, which is 
essential to his case, that the possession of pigs 
and the calling of a swineherd were actually 
illegal. The inquiry was put to me the other 
day; and, as I could not answer it, I turned up 
the article “Schwein” in Riehm’s standard 


398 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


XI 


“ Handworterbuch,” for help out of my difficulty; 
but unfortunately without success. After speaking 
of the martyrdom which the Jews, under Antiochus 
Epiphanes, preferred to eating pork, the writer 
proceeds:— 

It may be, nevertheless, that the practice of keeping pigs may 
have found its way into Palestine in the Grseco-Roman time, 
in consequence of the great increase of the non-Jewish popula¬ 
tion ; yet there is no evidence of it in the New Testament; 
the great herd of swine, 2,000 in number, mentioned in the 
narrative of the possessed, was feeding in the territory of 
Gadara, which belonged to the Decapolis; and the prodigal 
son became a swineherd with the native of a far country into 
which he had wandered; in neither of these cases is there 
reason for thinking that the possessors of these herds were 
Jews. 1 

Having failed in my search, so far, I took up 
the next work of reference at hand, Kitto’s 
“ Cyclopaedia ” (vol. iii. 1876). There, under 
u Swine,” the writer, Colonel Hamilton Smith, 
seemed at first to give me what I wanted, as he 
says that swine “ appear to have been repeatedly 
introduced and reared by the Hebrew people, 2 
notwithstanding the strong prohibition in the Law 
of Moses (Is. lxv. 4).” But, in the first place, 

1 I may call attention, in passing, to the fact that this author¬ 
ity, at any rate, has no sort of doubt of the fact that Jewish 
Law did not rule in Gadara (indeed, under the head of “ Gadara,” 
in the same work, it is expressly stated that the population of 
the place consisted “predominantly of heathens”), and that he 
scouts the notion that the Gadarene swineherds were Jews. 

2 The evidence adduced, so far as post-exile times are con¬ 
cerned, appears to me insufficient to prove this assertion. 


XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 399 


Isaiah’s writings form no part of the “Law of 
Moses ”; and, in the second place, the people 
denounced by the prophet in this passage are 
neither the possessors of pigs, nor swineherds, but 
these “ which eat swine’s flesh and broth of 
abominable things is in their vessels.” And when, 
in despair, I turned to the provisions of the Law 
itself, my difficulty was not cleared up. Leviticus 
xi. 8 (Revised Version) says, in reference to the 
pig and other unclean animals : “ Of their flesh ye 
shall not eat, and their carcasses ye shall not 
touch.” In the revised version of Deuteronomy, 
xiv. 8, the words of the prohibition are identical, 
and a skilful refiner might possibly satisfy himself, 
even if he satisfied nobody else, that “ carcase ” 
means the body of a live animal as well as a dead 
one ; and that, since swineherds could hardly avoid 
contact with their charges, their calling was im¬ 
plicitly forbidden. 1 Unfortunately, the authorised 
version expressly says “ dead carcase ”; and thus 
the most rabbinically minded of reconcilers might 
find his casuistry foiled by that great source of 
surprises, the “ original Hebrew.” That such 
check is at any rate possible, is clear from the fact 
that the legal uncleanness of some animals, as 
food, did not interfere with their being lawfully 
possessed, cared for, and sold by Jews. The 

1 Even Leviticus xi. 26, cited without reference to the con¬ 
text, will not serve the purpose; because the swine is “cloven- 
footed ” (Lev. xi. 7). 

141 


% 


400 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS zi 

provisions for the ransoming of unclean beasts 
(Lev. xxvii. 27) and for the redemption of their 
sucklings (Numbers xviii. 15) sufficiently prove this. 
As the late Dr. Kalisch has observed in his Com¬ 
mentary ” on Leviticus, part ii. p. 129, note :— 

Though asses and horses, camels and dogs, were kept by the 
Israelites, they were, to a certain extent, associated with the 
notion of impurity ; they might be turned to profitable account 
by their labour or otherwise, but in respect to food they were an 
abomination. 

The same learned commentator ( lee . cit. p. 88) 
proves that the Talmudists forbade the rearing of 
pigs by Jews, unconditionally and everywhere; 
and even included it under the same ban as the 
study of Greek philosophy, “ since both alike were 
considered to lead to the desertion of the Jewish 
faith.” It is very possible, indeed probable, that 
the Pharisees of the fourth decade of our first 
century took as strong a view of pig-keeping as 
did their spiritual descendants. But, for all that, 
it does not follow that the practice was illegal. 
The stricter Jews could not have despised and 
hated swineherds more than they did publicans ; 
but, so far as I know, there is no provision in the 
Law against the practice of the calling of a tax- 
gatherer by a Jew. The publican was in fact 
very much in the position of an Irish process- 
server at the present day—more, rather than less, 
despised and hated on account of the perfect 
legality of his occupation. Except for certain 


XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 401 


sacrificial purposes, pigs were held in such 
abhorrence by the ancient Egyptians, that 
swineherds were not permitted to enter a temple, 
or to intermarry with other castes; and any one 
who had touched a pig, even accidentally, was 
unclean. But these very regulations prove that 
pig-keeping was not illegal; it merely involved 
certain civil and religious disabilities. For the 
Jews, dogs were typically “ unclean animals ; but, 
when that eminently pious Hebrew, Tobit, “ went 
forth” with the angel “the young man’s dog” 
went“ with them ” (Tobit v. 16) without apparent 
remonstrance from the celestial guide. I really 
do not see how an appeal to the Law could have 
justified any one in drowning Tobit’s dog, on the 
ground that his master was keeping and feeding 
an animal quite as “ unclean ” as any pig. 
Certainly the excellent Raguel must have failed to 
see the harm of dog-keeping, for we are told that, 
on the travellers’ return homewards, “the dog 
went after them ” (xi. 4). 

Until better light than I have been able to 
obtain is thrown upon the subject, therefore, it is 
obvious that Mr. Gladstone’s argumentative house 
has been built upon an extremely slippery 
quicksand ; perhaps even has no foundation at all. 

Yet another “point” does not seem to have 
occurred to Mr. Gladstone, who is so much shocked 
that I attach no overwhelming weight to the 
assertions contained in the synoptic Gospels, even 


402 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


XI 


when all three concur. These Gospels agree in 
stating, in the most express, and to some extent 
verbally identical, terms, that the devils entered 
the pigs at their own request, 1 and the third 
Gospel (viii. 31) tells us what the motive of the 
demons was in asking the singular boon : “ They 
mtreated him that he would not command them 
to depart into the abyss.” From this, it would 
seem that the devils thought to exchange the 
heavy punishment of transportation to the abyss 
for the lighter penalty of imprisonment in swine. 
And some commentators, more ingenious than 
respectful to the supposed chief actor in this 
extraordinary fable, have dwelt, with satisfaction, 
upon the very unpleasant quarter of an hour 
which the evil spirits must have had, when the 
headlong rush of their maddened tenements 
convinced them how completely they were taken 
in. In the whole story, there is not one solitary 
hint that the destruction of the pigs was intended 
as a punishment of their owners, or of the 
swineherds. On the contrary, the concurrent 
testimony of the three narratives is to the effect 
that the catastrophe was the consequence of 
diabolic suggestion. And, indeed, no source could 

1 1st Gospel: “ And the devils besought him , saying, If Thou 
cast ns out send us away into the herd of swine. ” 2d Gospel : 
“They besought him, saying, Send us into the swine.” 3d 
Gospel: “ They intreated him that he would give them leave to 
enter into them.” 


XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 403 


be more appropriate for an act of such manifest 
injustice and illegality. 

I can but marvel that modern defenders of the 
faith should not be glad of any reasonable excuse 
for getting rid of a story which, if it had been 
invented by Voltaire, would have justly let loose 
floods of orthodox indignation. 

Thus, the hypothesis, to which Mr. Gladstone so 
fondly clings, finds no support in the provisions of 
the “ Law of Moses ” as that law is defined in the 
Pentateuch; while it is wholly inconsistent with 
the concurrent testimony of the synoptic Gospels, 
to which Mr. Gladstone attaches so much weight. 
In my judgment, it is directly contrary to every¬ 
thing which profane history tells us about the 
constitution and the population of the city of 
Gadara; and it commits those who accept it to a 
story which, if it were true, would implicate 
the founder of Christianity in an illegal and in¬ 
equitable act. 

Such being the case, I consider myself excused 
from following Mr Gladstone through all the 
meanderings of his late attempt to extricate 
himself from the maze of historical and exegetical 
difficulties in which he is entangled. I content 
myself with assuring those who, with my paper 
(not Mr. Gladstone’s version 9 f my arguments) in 
hand, consult the original authorities, that they 
will find full justification for every statement I 


404 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


XI 


have made. But in order to dispose those who 
cannot, or will not, take that trouble, to believe 
that the proverbial blindness of one that judges his 
own cause plays no part in inducing me to speak 
thus decidedly, I beg their attention to the 
following examination, which shall be as brief as I 
can make it, of the seven propositions in which 
Mr. Gladstone professes to give a faithful summary 
of my “ errors.” 

When, in the middle of the seventeenth cen¬ 
tury, the Holy See declared that certain proposi¬ 
tions contained in the works of Bishop Jansen 
were heretical, the Jansenists of Port Royal 
replied that, while they were ready to defer to 
the Papal authority about questions of faith and 
morals, they must be permitted to judge about 
questions of fact for themselves ; and that, really, 
the condemned propositions were not to be found 
in Jansen’s writings. As everybody knows, His 
Holiness and the Grand Monarque replied to this, 
surely not unreasonable, plea after the manner of 
Lord Peter in the “ Tale of a Tub.” It is, there¬ 
fore, not without some apprehension of meeting 
with a similar fate, that I put in a like plea 
against Mr. Gladstone’s Bull. The seven proposi¬ 
tions declared to be false and condemnable, in 
that kindly and gentle way which so pleasantly 
compares with the authoritative style of the 
Vatican (No. 5 more particularly), may or may 
not be true. But they are not to be found in 


XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 405 


anything I have written. And some of them 
diametrically contravene that which I have 
written. I proceed to prove my assertions. 

Prop. 1. Throughout the paper he confounds to¬ 
gether what 1 had distinguished , namely , the city 
of Gadara and the vicinage attached to it, not as a 
mere pomoerium , hut as a rural district. 

In my judgment, this statement is devoid of 
foundation. In my paper on “ The Keepers of 
the Herd of Swine ” I point out, at some length, 
that, “in accordance with the ancient Hellenic 
practice,” each city of the Decapolis must have 
been “ surrounded by a certain amount of territory 
amenable to its jurisdiction ” : and, to enforce this 
conclusion, I quote what Josephus says about the 
“ villages that belonged to Gadara and Hippos.” 
As I understand the term pomerium ox pomoerium} 
it means the space which, according to Roman 
custom, was kept free from buildings, immediately 
within and without the walls of a city; and which 
defined the range of the auspicia urbana. The 
conception of a pomoerium as a “ vicinage attached 
to” a city, appears to be something quite novel 
and original. But then, to be sure, I do not know 
how many senses Mr. Gladstone may attach to the 
word “ vicinage.” 

Whether Gadara had a pomoerium , in the 
proper technical sense, or not, is a point on which 
I offer no opinion. But that the city had a very 
1 See Marquardt, Romische Staatsverwaltuny, Bd. III. p. 408. 


406 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


XI 


considerable “rural district” attached to it and 
notwithstanding its distinctness, amenable to the 
jurisdiction of the Gentile municipal authorities, 
is one of the main points of my case. 

Prop. 2. He more fatally confounds the local civil 
government and its following, including, perhaps, 
the whole wealthy class and those attached to it, with 
the ethnical character of the general population. 

Having survived confusion No. 1, which turns 
out not to be on my side, I am now confronted in 
No. 2 with a “more fatal” error—and so it is, if 
there be degrees of fatality; but, again, it is Mr. 
Gladstone’s and not mine. It would appear, from 
this proposition (about the grammatical interpre¬ 
tation of which, however, I admit there are diffi¬ 
culties), that Mr. Gladstone holds that the “ local 
civil government and its following among the 
Wealthy,” were ethnically different from the 
“general population.” On p. 348, he further 
admits that the “ wealthy and the local governing 
power” were friendly to the Romans. Are we 
then to suppose that ft was the persons of Jewish 
“ethnical character” who favoured the Romans, 
while those of Gentile “ ethnical character ” were 
opposed to them ? But, if that supposition is 
absurd, the only alternative is that the local civil 
government was ethnically Gentile. This is 
exactly my contention. 

At pp. 379 to 391 of the essay on “ The 
Keepers of the Herd of Swine” I have fully 


XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 407 


discussed the question of the ethnical character 
of the general population. I have shown that, 
according to Josephus, who surely ought to have 
known, Gadara was as much a Gentile city as 
Ptolemais; I have proved that he includes Gadara 
amongst the cities “that rose up against the Jews 
that were amongst them/' which is a pretty 
definite expression of his belief that the “ ethnical 
character of the general population ” was Gentile. 
There is no question here of Jews of the Roman 
party fighting with Jews of the Zealot party, as 
Mr. Gladstone suggests. It is the non-Jewish 
and anti-Jewish general population which rises 
up against the Jews who had settled “ among 
them.” 

Prop. 3. His one item of direct evidence as to the 
Gentile character of the city refers only to the former 
and not to the latter. 

More fatal still. But, once more, not to me. I 
adduce not one, but a variety of “ items ” in proof 
of the non-Judaic character of the population of 
Gadara: the evidence of history; that of the 
coinage of the city; the direct testimony of 
Josephus, just cited—to mention no others. I 
repeat, if the wealthy people and those connected 
with them—the “classes” and the “hangers on” 
of Mr. Gladstone’s well-known taxonomy—were, 
as he appears to admit they were, Gentiles; if the 
“ civil government ” of the city was in their hands, 
as the coinage proves it was; what becomes of 


408 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


XI 


Mr. Gladstone’s original proposition in “ The 
Impregnable Rock of Scripture ” that “ the popu¬ 
lation of Gadara, and still less (if less may be) the 
population of the neighbourhood,” were “ Hebrews 
bound by the Mosaic law ” ? And what is the 
importance of estimating the precise proportion of 
Hebrews who may have resided, either in the city 
of Gadara or in its dependent territory, when, as 
Mr. Gladstone now seems to admit (I am careful 
to say “ seems ”), the government, and conse¬ 
quently the law, which ruled in that territory and 
defined civil right and wrong was Gentile and not 
Judaic? But perhaps Mr. Gladstone is prepared 
to maintain that the Gentile “ local civil govern¬ 
ment” of a city of the Decapolis administered 
Jewish Law; and showed their respect for it, 
more particularly, by stamping their coinage with 
effigies of the Emperors. 

In point of fact, in his haste to attribute to me 
errors which I have not committed, Mr. Gladstone 
has given away his case. 

Prop. 4. He fatally confounds the question of 
'political 'party with those of nationality and of 
religion , and assumes that those who took the side 
of Rome in the factions that prevailed could not he 
subject to the Mosaic Law . 

It would seem that I have a feline tenacity of 
life ; once more, a “ fatal error.” But Mr. Glad¬ 
stone has forgotten an excellent rule of contro¬ 
versy ; say what is true, of course, but mind that 


XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 409 


it is decently probable. Now it is not decently 
probable, hardly indeed conceivable, that any one 
who has read Josephus, or any other historian of 
the Jewish war, should be unaware that there 
were Jews (of whom Josephus himself was one) 
who :t Romanised ” and, more or less openly, 
opposed the war party. But, however that may 
be, I assert that Mr. Gladstone neither has 
produced, nor can produce, a passage of my 
writing which affords the slightest foundation for 
this particular article of his indictment. 

Prop. 5. His examination of the text of 
Josephus is alike one-sided, inadequate, and 
erroneous. 

Easy to say, hard to prove. So long as the 
authorities whom I have cited are on my side, I 
do not know why this singularly temperate and 
convincing dictum should trouble me. I have yet 
to become acquainted with Mr. Gladstone’s claims 
to speak with an authority equal to that of scholars 
of the rank of Schurer, whose obviously just and 
necessary emendations he so unceremoniously 
pooh-poohs. 

Prop. 6. Finally, he sets aside, on grounds not 
critical or historical, hut partly subjective, the 
primary historical testimony on the subject, namely, 
that of the three Synoptic Evangelists, who write as 
contemporaries and deal directly with the subject , 
neither of which is done by any other authority. 

Really this is too much ! The fact is, as anybody 


410 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


XI 


can see who will turn to my article of February 
1889 [VII. supra\ out of which all this discussion 
has arisen, that the arguments upon which I rest the 
strength of my case touching the swine-miracle, are 
exactly “ historical ” and “ critical.” Expressly, and 
in words that cannot he misunderstood, I refuse to 
rest on what Mr. Gladstone calls “subjective” 
evidence. I abstain from denying the possibility 
of the Gadarene occurrence, and I even go so far as 
to speak of some physical analogies to possession. 
In fact, my quondam opponent, Dr. Wace, 
shrewdly, but quite fairly, made the most of these 
admissions; and stated that I had removed the 
only “ consideration which would have been a 
serious obstacle ” in the way of his belief in the 
Gadarene story. 1 

So far from setting aside the authority of the 
synoptics on “ subjective ” grounds, I have taken 
a great deal of trouble to show that my non-belief 
in the story is based upon what appears to me to 
be evident; firstly, that the accounts of the three 
synoptic Gospels are not independent, but are 
founded upon a common source; secondly, that, 
even if the story of the common tradition pro¬ 
ceeded from a contemporary, it would still be 
worthy of very little credit, seeing the manner in 
which the legends about mediaeval miracles have 
been propounded by contemporaries. And in 

1 Nineteenth Century, Marcli 1889 (p. 362). 


XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 411 


illustration of this position I wrote a special essay 
about the miracles reported by Eginhard. 1 

In truth, one need go no further than Mr. 
Gladstone’s sixth proposition to be convinced that 
contemporary testimony, even of well-known and 
distinguished persons, may be but a very frail reed 
for the support of the historian, when theological 
prepossession blinds the witness. 2 

Prop. 7. And he treats the entire question, in the 
narrowed form in which it arises upon secular testi¬ 
mony , as if it were capable of a solution so clear and 

1 “The Value of Witness to the Miraculous.” Nineteenth 
Century , March 1889. 

2 I cannot ask the Editor of this Review to reprint pages of 
an old article,—but the following passages sufficiently illustrate 
the extent and the character of the discrepancy between the 
facts of the case and Mr. Gladstone’s account of them :— 

“Now, in the Gadarene affair, I do not think I am 
unreasonably sceptical if I say that the existence of demons who 
can be transferred from a man to a pig does thus contravene 
probability. Let me be perfectly candid. I admit I have no a, 
priori objection to offer. ... 1 declare, as plainly as I can, 
that I am unable to show cause why these transferable devils 
should not exist.” . . . (“Agnosticism,” Nineteenth Century, 
1889, p. 177). 

“ What then do we know about the originator, or originators, 
of this groundwork—of that threefold tradition which all three 
witnesses (in Paley’s phrase) agree upon—that we should allow 
their mere statements to outweigh the counter arguments of 
humanity, of common sense, of exact science, and to imperil 
the respect which all would be glad to be able to render to their 
Master?” (ibid. p. 175). 

I then go on through a couple of pages to discuss the value of 
the evidence of the synoptics on critical and historical grounds. 
Mr. Gladstone cites the essay from which these passages are 
taken, whence I suppose he has read it; though it may be that 
he shares the impatience of Cardinal Manning where my writings 
are concerned. Such impatience will account for, though it will 
not excuse, his sixth proposition. 


412 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


XI 


summary as to warrant the use of the extremest 
weapons of controversy against those who presume to 
differ from him. 

The six heretical propositions which have gone 
before are enunciated with sufficient clearness to 
enable me to prove, without any difficulty, that, 
whosesoever they are, they are not mine. But 
number seven, I confess, is too hard for me. I 
cannot undertake to contradict that which I do 
not understand. 

What is the “ entire question ” which “ arises ” 
ina“ narrowed form ” upon “ secular testimony ” ? 
After much guessing, I am fain to give up the 
conundrum. The “ question ” may be the owner¬ 
ship of the pigs; or the ethnological character of 
the Gadarenes ; or the propriety of meddling with 
other people’s property without legal warrant. 
And each of these questions might be so 
‘‘narrowed ” when it arose on “ secular testimony ” 
that I should not know where I was. So I am 
silent on this part of the proposition. 

But I do dimly discern, in the latter moiety of 
this mysterious paragraph, a reproof of that use of 
“ the extremest weapons of controversy ” which is 
attributed to me. Upon which I have to observe 
that I guide myself, in such matters, very much by 
the maxim of a great statesman, “ Do ut des.” If 
Mr. Gladstone objects to the employment of such 
weapons in defence, he would do well to abstain 
from them in attack. He should not frame 


XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 413 


charges which he has, afterwards, to admit are 
erroneous, in language of carefully calculated 
offensiveness (“Impregnable Rock,” pp. 269-70); he 
should not assume that persons with whom he 
disagrees are so recklessly unconscientious as to 
evade the trouble of inquiring what has been said 
or known about a grave question (“ Impregnable 
Rock,” p. 273); he should not qualify the results of 
careful thought as “hand-over-head reasoning” 
(“ Impregnable Rock,” p. 274) ; he should not, as in 
the extraordinary propositions which I have just 
analysed, make assertions respecting his opponent’s 
position and arguments which are contradicted by 
the plainest facts. 

Persons who, like myself, have spent their 
lives outside the political world, yet take a mild 
and philosophical concern in what goes on in it, 
often find it difficult to understand what our 
neighbours call the psychological moment of this 
or that party leader, and are, occasionally, loth to 
believe in the seeming conditions of certain kinds 
of success. And when some chieftain, famous in 
political warfare, adventures into the region of 
letters or of science, in full confidence that the 
methods which have brought fame and honour in 
his own province will answer there, he is apt to 
forget that he will be judged by these people, on 
whom rhetorical artifices have long ceased to take 
effect; and to whom mere dexterity in putting 


414 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


XI 


together cleverly ambiguous phrases, and even the 
great art of offensive misrepresentation, are un¬ 
speakably wearisome. And, if that weariness 
finds its expression in sarcasm, the offender really 
has no right to cry out. Assuredly, ridicule is no 
test of truth, but it is the righteous meed of some 
kinds of error. Nor ought the attempt to con¬ 
found the expression of a revolted sense of fair 
dealing with arrogant impatience of contradiction, 
to restrain those to whom “ the extreme weapons 
of controversy ” come handy from using them. 
The function of police in the intellectual, if not in 
the civil, economy may sometimes be legitimately 
discharged by volunteers. 

Some time ago, in one of the many criticisms 
with which I am favoured, I met with the remark 
that, at our time of life, Mr. Gladstone and I might 
be better occupied than in fighting over the 
Gadarene pigs. And, if these too famous swine 
were the only parties to the suit, I, for my part, 
should fully admit the justice of the rebuke. But, 
under the beneficent rule of the Court of 
Chancery, in former times, it was not uncommon, 
that a quarrel about a few perches of worthless 
land, ended in the ruin of ancient families and the 
engulfing of great estates; and I think that our 
admonisher failed to observe the analogy—to 
note the momentous consequences of the judgment 


XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL ME1UODS 415 


which may be awarded in the present apparently in¬ 
significant action in re the swineherds of Gadara. 

The immediate effect of such judgment will be 
the decision of the question, whether the men of 
the nineteenth century are to adopt the demon¬ 
ology of the men of the first century, as divinely 
revealed truth, or to reject it, as degrading falsity. 
The reverend Principal of King’s College has 
delivered his judgment in perfectly clear and 
candid terms. Two years since, Dr. Wace said 
that he believed the story as it stands; and con¬ 
sequently he holds, as a part of divine revelation, 
that the spiritual world comprises devils, who, 
under certain circumstances, may enter men and 
be transferred from them to four-footed beasts. 
For the distinguished Anglican Divine and Biblical 
scholar, that is part and parcel of the teachings 
respecting the spiritual world which we owe to the 
founder of Christianity. It is an inseparable part 
of that Christian orthodoxy which, if a man 
rejects, he is to be considered and called an 
“infidel.” According to the ordinary rules of 
interpretation of language, Mr. Gladstone must 
hold the same view. 

If antiquity and universality are valid tests of 
the truth of any belief, no doubt this is one of the 
beliefs so certified. There are no known savages, 
nor people sunk in the ignorance of partial civili¬ 
sation, who do not hold them. The great majority 
142 


416 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


n 


of Christians have held them and still hold them. 
Moreover the oldest records we possess of the 
early conceptions of mankind in Egypt and in 
Mesopotamia prove that exactly sneh demonology, 
as is implied in the Gadarene story, formed the 
substratum, and, among the early Aeeadians, 
apparently the greater part, of their supposed 
knowledge of the spiritual world. ML Lenonn ant's 
profoundly interesting work on Babylonian magic 
and the magical texts given in the Appendix to 
Professor Sayce’s “ Hibbeit Lectures ” leave no 
doubt on this head. They prove that the doc trine 
of possession, and even the particular case of pig 
possession, 1 were firmly believed in by the Egyp¬ 
tians and the Mesopotamians before the tribes of 
Israel invaded Palestine. And it is evident that 
these beliefs, from some time after the exile 
and probably much earlier, completely interpene¬ 
trated the Jewish mind, and thus became insepn 
arably interwoven with the fabric of the synoptic 
Gospels. 

Therefore, behind the question of the acceptance 
of the doctrines of the oldest heathen demonology 
as part of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity, 
there lies the question of the credibility of the 

1 The ’srlc-ted, before being annthil&tei, setamed to the -srorld 
to disturb men ; they entered into the boiy of unclean s.t -’ms.]* 
“ often that of & pig, as on the Sarcophagus of Sea J. in the 
Soane Museum/'— : rmant C'.a+ican Ma-yi\ p. St, Eiitoiial 
Note. 


J1 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 417 

Gospels, and of their claim to act as onr instruct¬ 
ors, outside that ethical province in which they 
appeal to the consciousness of all thoughtful men. 
And still, behind this problem, there lies another 
— how far do these ancient records give a sure 
foundation to the prodigious fabric of Christian 
dogma, which has been built upon them by the 
continuous labours of speculative theologians, 
during eighteen centuries ? 

o o 

I submit that there are few questions before 
the men of the rising generation, on the answer 
to which the future hangs more fatally, than this. 
We are at the parting of the ways. Whether the 
twentieth century shall see a recrudescence of the 
superstitions of mediaeval papistry, or whether it 
shall witness the severance of the living body of 
the ethical ideal of prophetic Israel from the car¬ 
case, foul with savage superstitions and cankered 
with false philosophy, to which the theologians 
have bound it, turns upon their final judgment of 
the Gadarene tale. 

The gravity of the problems ultimately involved 
in the discussion of the legend of Gadara will, I 
hope, excuse a persistence in returning to the sub¬ 
ject, to which I should not have been moved by 
merely personal considerations. 

With respect to the diluvial invective which 
overflowed thirty-three pages of the “ Nineteenth 


418 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 


XI 


Century ” last January, I doubt not that it has a 
catastrophic importance in the estimation of its 
author. I, on the other hand, may be permitted 
to regard it as a mere spate; noisy and threatening 
while it lasted, but forgotten almost as soon as it 
was over. Without my help, it will be judged by 
every instructed and clear-headed reader; and 
that is fortunate, because, were aid necessary, I 
have cogent reasons for withholding it. 

In an article characterised by the same qualities 
of thought and diction, entitled “ A Great Lesson,” 
which appeared in the “Nineteenth Century” for 
September 1887, the Duke of Argyll, firstly, charged 
the whole body of men of science, interested in the 
question, with having conspired to ignore certain 
criticisms of Mr. Darwin’s theory of the origin of 
coral reefs; and, secondly, he asserted that some 
person unnamed had “ actually induced ” Mr. John 
Murray to delay the publication of his views on 
that subject “ for two years.” 

It was easy for me and for others to prove that 
the first statement was not only, to use the Duke 
of Argyll’s favourite expression, “ contrary to fact,” 
but that it was without any foundation whatever. 
The second statement rested on the Duke of 
Argyll’s personal authority. All I could do was to 
demand the production of the evidence for it. Up 
to the present time, so far as I know, that evidence 
has not made its appearance; nor lias there been 


XI 


PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS 419 


any withdrawal of, or apology for, the erroneous 
charge. 

Under these circumstances most people will 
understand why the Duke of Argyll may feel 
quite secure of having the battle all to himself, 
whenever it pleases him to attack me. 

[See the note at the end of “ Hasisadra’s 
Adventure” (vol iv. p. 283). The discussion on 
coral reefs, at the meeting of the British Associa¬ 
tion this year, proves that Mr. Darwin’s views are 
defended now, as strongly as in 1891, by highly 
competent authorities. October 25, 1893.] 


END OF VOL. V 













































































































































































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